by James Axler
He could feel the pain building in his bad leg as he hopped along on his crutch. The original damage to his knee, like every other catastrophe in his life, had been jolt-related. When he had failed to pay the local supplier of the drug, he got his kneecap shattered with a ballpeen hammer. It was meant to serve as a warning. It should have been taken as a warning.
It wasn’t.
Beside him, Young Crad tunelessly whistled through his front teeth.
“Shut the fuck up,” he told the droolie.
They walked along in silence for a long time, following the horse tracks in the sand.
When the cannon fodder column finally reached the interstate and the dropped bridge, Malosh turned them toward Sunspot, detouring around the dropped overpass. On the far side of the rubble, because of the highway’s upward incline, the going got more difficult for Bezoar. It forced him to lean even harder on the crutch. It was too dark to see the mouth of the gorge in the distance, but the silhouette of the ridgetop against the stars and the fire lights on the left-hand rim gave Bezoar a sense of its size. And menace.
To him it seemed like the killing chute of an immense slaughterhouse.
Where was the glory in being led single-file into an abattoir? he asked himself. And unlike slaughtered cows or a hogs, their meat would rot in the desert sun. Fly food.
In front of them, Baron Malosh’s big chestnut suddenly reared and sidestepped, detouring around a section of ruined road.
Bezoar caught a powerful reek of ammonia. It got stronger as they advanced farther. Some kind of vile liquid spoor had been sprayed over the ground.
Young Crad recognized the stench. “It’s the thing,” he said. “It’s what dug up all the graves.”
“Where?” Bezoar said, swiveling his head to look from one shadowy side of the road to the other.
“Take it easy,” Ferdinando told him. “It won’t dare attack. There are too many of us.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was hanging around the last time I fought here, when the dead horse fell on me and I lost my arm,” the head of the cannon fodder said. “Seemed like there was only the one. Like a big cat, I guess it needs a lot of territory to hunt. We never saw it during the day, we just found the tracks in the sand along the side of the road. And the piss or shit, whatever it is it leaves behind. It probably lives in a hole somewhere out in the bush. Only comes out at night. Can’t bury the dead deep enough or pile enough rocks on the graves to keep it from digging them up. Free eats for a big-time scavenger.”
“What the hell is it?” Bezoar said.
“Nobody knows for sure.”
“Legs,” Young Crad said. “Lots of legs.”
“Yeah, and it moves so fast your eye can’t hardly follow it. We never found any part of the dead ones that it took, either. Snatches up its live victims the same way. Zip and they’re just gone. Probably carries them back to its hidey-hole.”
“Alive?”
“Let’s hope not.”
After they’d walked a little farther up the grade, Ferdinando asked, “You made your peace, yet, pig man?”
“Working on it,” Bezoar said.
“Well, don’t work too long. Once we step into the gorge, nukin’ hell’s gonna break loose. You and your triple-stupe buddy better be ready to meet your maker.”
For somebody in exactly the same position they were—about to be shot to shit—Ferdinando was pretty fucking chipper. But not nearly as chipper as Baron Malosh. The masked man rode tall in the saddle, cantering his horse this way and that, leading the column around the scattering of open, emptied graves.
False dawn was breaking in front of them as they neared the entrance to the gorge. In the faint light, Bezoar could just make out the looming walls of rock that bracketed the interstate. Blazing fire cans on the ridge lit up the sides of the three gun positions that commanded and controlled the stretch of ancient highway. The line of sacrificial lambs was about to enter a well-established kill zone. Bezoar knew the heavy blasters outside Sunspot’s berm had to have the range locked in. It was too dark to see clustered bullet holes and rows of spawl marks strafed into the roadbed. And of course, there were no bodies or body parts to stumble over, as the creature had taken care of cleanup.
Malosh’s strategy was to move in just before the break of dawn so the ville defenders couldn’t see that they were up against a token force of cotton tops, peg-legs and eight-year-olds.
Dread hung over Bezoar in a sickening fog as they advanced into the jaws of the gorge. Had they been seen by the enemy already? There was no cover that he could see ahead. It was a four-lane highway, with no divider except for a dirt strip. He couldn’t make out the gun barrels on the high slope above but he imagined their gun sights. Tracking. Tracking. Tracking. He lowered his head and trudged onward, though it was even harder for him to walk, what with one knee stiff and the other gone all to rubber.
If the gunners on the ridge saw them, they held their fire, letting the column advance until it was completely within the kill zone.
“Get ready to run,” Ferdinando said.
“Where to?”
“There’s cover on the far side of the turnoff.”
At that moment Malosh turned to his troops and shouted, “Run!” As the cry echoed through the gorge, he spurred his horse, galloping the last hundred feet to the edge of the blown-up section of road.
It was all Bezoar could do to keep from being trampled by the people running for their lives behind him. Young Crad grabbed him under the armpit on the bad knee side and half carried him forward or he would have certainly been swept under and crushed.
On the other side of the predark turnoff to the Welcome Center, Bezoar could see weak light reflecting off small pools and trenches filled with standing water. The ruined stretch of road was littered with mounds of earth and thick, uptilted slabs of concrete reinforced with rebar. Such was the only cover on offer.
As Bezoar and Young Crad three-legged raced to the disrupted zone, Sunspot’s gunposts cut loose, raining blasterfire down on them from above. Heavy-caliber slugs sparked off concrete and steel, kicking up dust and sending shards of road metal flying.
Ahead of them, Ferdinando leaped over the first of the water hazards and dived behind a three-foot-high pile of rubble. Young Crad gave Bezoar a hard shove, sending him and his crutch skidding into an open trench. The water was cold and hip-deep, but it was shielded from incoming fire by a canted slab of concrete.
As Crad jumped in the water beside him, other fodderites dashed or limped or crawled past, looking for a place to hide.
Although it was getting lighter by the second, Haldane’s gunners couldn’t have seen exactly what they were shooting at. They laid overlapping waves of machine-gun fire onto the road, hosing it down with lead.
The effect was like random meat grinder.
The slow and the unfortunate were chopped down in droves. Flicked to earth. Staggered. Not just chilled.
Disintegrated by converging, triangulated blasterfire.
A man in his forties lurched toward them, his right shoulder blown off, arm hanging by thread of sinew. As he clutched his terrible wound, he was hit in the back by dozens of down-angled rounds. Which opened his torso from throat to crotch and emptied his body cavity in an awful whoosh.
The wash of hot blood and guts sprayed over Bezoar’s head. Gagging, he crouched lower, chin under water, unable to breathe for his own fear. He could feel the ground shaking underfoot from the ravening impacts of machine-gun bullets.
The sky was lightening apace.
In dawn’s glimmer, Bezoar saw piles of still bodies. He saw quivering bodies. Others crawled, mortally wounded, screaming as bullets stitched up their backs, swallowed up in clouds of dust. The water in the swineherds’ trench had turned red.
Of the hundred or so who marched into the valley of death, eighty survivors had found cover.
Bezoar was astonished to see that Malosh the Impaler was still astride his horse, ridi
ng back and forth while bullets sailed all around him, taunting the gun positions.
The other fodder was stunned by his bravery, too. The baron and his horse seemed impervious to alloys of lead. When he spurred his steed behind a wide, uptilted section of roadway and dismounted, the shooting from above abruptly stopped.
“Ready for some payback?” he shouted through a gloved hand to his human sponges.
A ragged cheer went up.
A bit less enthusiastic than before, Bezoar noted. If Malosh’s life was in fact charmed, sprawled on the ground all around them was proof that charm wasn’t catching.
“Open fire!” the baron cried.
Ferdinando echoed the order to the troops. “Shoot! Shoot! Get the bastards!”
The armed fodder poked their scarred assault rifles around and over chunks of concrete and mounds of dirt. AKs barked single-shot and streamed blasterfire along the destroyed section of highway. The more cautious shooters fired blind and one-handed, upward in the general direction of the ville. Others stuck their heads out from behind cover and actually aimed.
They were the unlucky ones.
Sunspot’s gun positions resumed firing, this time with muzzle-flashes to aim at. Whether what happened next was the result of concentrated incoming fire or some of the junk AKs blowing up on their own, blow up they did, like frag grens. What metal and wood the shooters didn’t absorb with their bodies and heads flew through the air.
Young Crad shielded Bezoar with his wide chest, and jammed his head under water. When Crad let him up, the elder swineherd sputtered and choked, but he didn’t complain. Not ten feet away, a cotton-topped shooter clutched a shattered buttstock driven through the side of his throat. Moaning, he struggled in vain to pull the thing from his neck. A little farther along, a young boy lay with his cheek pressed to the ground. Jutting from between his dead staring eyes was a dark shape. Part of the receiver and gas cylinder had been driven through his forehead.
Those with assault rifles that didn’t explode or jam kept on shooting. Ferdinando moved up and down the ragged firing line and passed out extra 30-round mags. The thousands of unaimed rounds being expended weren’t a waste, any more than the dead fodder that decorated the battle field. They were the cost of victory. The enemy for its part was unleashing tens of thousands of rounds. And every bullet fired in this direction was a bullet that couldn’t be used to turn back the main attack.
When there was lull in the firing from Sunspot, Bezoar could hear Malosh laughing. “Conserve your ammo!” the baron shouted down the line. “Space your shots. Let ’em burn out their gun barrels.”
The elder swineherd saw Malosh turn to his horse and open one of the saddle bags. He took out a fat-barreled, orange-colored handblaster. He broke open the barrel to make sure it was loaded, then snapped it shut. Cocking the strange weapon, the baron aimed it over the top of the concrete slab that protected him and his horse.
The pistol made a hollow pop when he fired it. The round trailed a thin coil of smoke as it sailed away. It didn’t sail fast. Bezoar could easily follow its path. It flew in a high, looping arc toward Sunspot. High above the berm walls, it exploded.
The bright red flash against the lavender sky signaled the beginning of the end.
Chapter Nineteen
Doc Tanner sat huddled with his back pressed against a wall of hurricane fence, his long legs tucked up under his chin. His hands and feet were unbound, but his LeMat and swordstick had been confiscated by Haldane’s men. The holding cell in which he had been placed was actually a cage, with wire on five sides and a six-by-twelve concrete pad for a floor. Completely open to the elements, it stood next to the Welcome Center building. Before the nukecaust it was a locked utility and storage area.
Now it was death row.
Twenty feet away, a fire blazed in a fifty-five-gallon drum. Two armed guards stood beside the barrel. Behind them were the ville’s extensive communal gardens.
Doc tried to move as little as possible. Moving hurt. He was sore from his lengthy interrogation by Haldane’s sec men, which consisted of short periods of questioning interrupted by long periods of kicking and punching. They had asked him how close Malosh’s army was. They had asked him if attack was imminent. How many troops he had? Did he have artillery? They asked him what happened to the triple-stupe droolie.
Doc had chosen to say nothing except “I do not know.”
To offer any information to his interrogators meant committing to something that he would have had to keep track of.
After a few hours the soldiers realized they could kill him but they couldn’t break him. Killing him would have robbed the garrison of the drama of the hanging ceremony, certainly the high point of the week. And on top of that, they had gotten tired of knocking him around.
During the questioning, Doc flashed back to torture he had previously endured, at the hands of Cort Strasser. Compared to him, Haldane’s men were pikers.
The knowledge that Malosh and his army were coming, and soon, helped Doc endure the punishment. He knew that Haldane’s men were outnumbered, three to one. If he wasn’t going to survive the battle for Sunspot, he was confident that most of his torturers weren’t, either. He would dance at the end of a rope, satisfied that he had saved his dear companions’ lives and that they in turn would avenge his murder.
The sudden roar of heavy machine guns from outside the berm made the guards at the burn barrel jump. As the clattering blasterfire roared on and on, the Welcome Center garrison doors banged open and armed troops raced to their battle stations. One of the barrel guards took off, as well, disappearing around a corner on a dead run.
The remaining guard, who had enthusiastically participated in the interrogation, looked over at the caged Doc Tanner.
Doc rose to his feet as the short, skinny man stepped up to the wire, a nasty look on his weather-seamed face.
“Think your pal Malosh is gonna save you?” the guard said, dropping his AK’s fire selector lever to full-auto and sticking the muzzle through the fence. “Think again.”
There was nowhere for Doc to go in the narrow cage, nowhere that bullets couldn’t find him, so he stood perfectly still.
Before the guard could pull the assault rifle’s trigger, he was hit from behind and slammed face-first into the mesh, grimacing in pain. Steel points protruded through the front of his T-shirt, pitching four little pup tents in the fabric. Black blood drooled from his parted lips, spilling down his chest.
Moving out of the now-fixed line of fire, Doc saw Isabel standing behind the guard, her hands gripping the handle of a pitchfork. She had stuck the soldier in the back with such force that she had driven the eighteen-inch tines through his chest.
With a vicious twist, she freed the fork. And when the guard staggered backward, clutching his chest with both hands, she pivoted from her hips, slamming the end of the fork handle into the side of his head. He dropped to his knees, vomiting blood in a torrent.
She jabbed him with the business end of the fork and he toppled to his side on the ground, twitching helplessly.
Doc had no doubt that either of the blindingly fast blows would have been enough to chill him. They were that savage.
Isabel put down her weapon and searched the dead man’s pockets. She quickly found the keys to the cage’s lock.
“Madam, I am forever in your debt,” he said as she opened the door to his cell.
“No time for thanks, let’s go.” She pulled the AK from the wire where it hung by its muzzle and front sight.
“I must collect my own armament before we proceed,” Doc told her. “I know where it is.”
Ignoring her protests, he trotted around the side of the building and pushed through the Welcome Center’s front doors. Leaning against the cinder-block wall was a pair of huge, two-inch-thick steel plates designed to reinforce the flimsy entry doors. Torches in stanchions lit a hallway that led to the reception area. It was obvious that men had been sleeping on the tiled floor. There were mattresses o
f piled cardboard, ratty blankets and dirty clothes scattered around. There was also evidence that at some earlier time, intense fighting had taken place inside the building. Everywhere he looked there were bullet craters.
Doc made a beeline for the information desk, which was pocked and splintered with slug holes. He rounded the counter and bent behind it. Fumbling on the top shelf he found his ebony-handled walking stick. He unsheathed the rapier blade to make sure it hadn’t been damaged. Satisfied that the edge was intact, he started looking for his handblaster.
“Hurry up,” Isabel urged him.
As she spoke, the door behind the counter banged open and a soldier stepped out. He was as surprised to see Doc as Doc was to see him.
Before the man could swing his assault rifle around on its shoulder strap and bring the muzzle to bear on Doc, before Isabel could swing her own weapon up to shoot him, the old man snatched up his sword and lunged from his knees, driving with both legs. The rapier’s point entered just below the soldier’s sternum, and lickety split it slipped into his torso like a well-oiled scabbard, all the way to the hilt. As Doc whipped the blade out, he rolled his wrist and forearm, cutting a precise, overhand figure eight, which severed the heart from its major blood vessels. The soldier was dead before he hit the floor.
Doc wiped the blade on the man’s shirttail.
“Get your blaster, let’s go!” Isabel said.
Doc found the LeMat and its Mexican rig holster in a cardboard box on the bottom shelf. “After you, my dear,” he said as he strapped the hand-tooled belt to his waist.