Deathlands 067: Death Hunt

by James Axler

  BONES ALMOST DROPPED the vid camera when Mildred came into view, and she broke the silence, her voice seeming unnaturally loud in the silence of the room. From seeing her in miniature in the viewfinder, she was now revealed in full size in front of him.

  “The hunt’s under way. Won’t Ethan be pissed at you for being late?” she asked in a neutral tone.

  “Not half as pissed as he will be when I don’t turn up. And I’ve got a feeling that I won’t be turning up,” the old man replied with a resigned sigh. “Look, d’you mind if I sit down?” he added, seating himself without waiting for an answer. He put the vid camera on the table and took a pocket handkerchief from the breast pocket of his coat, mopping his forehead with it, then taking off his glasses to polish them. He was squinting so heavily without them that Mildred figured he was almost blind. She couldn’t tell, but she would bet that it was cataracts. Something that she could have done something about, once.

  Curiously, she felt sure that he wasn’t going to reach for a blaster, or a weapon of any kind. He had a resigned air about it him that made any such thoughts absurd. But she didn’t lower her ZKR.

  Bones put his glasses back on and stared at the blaster. “That’s not really necessary, y’know,” he said sadly. “I’m not armed, and to tell the truth I’ve always been a crap shot anyway. You could snuff me out before I had a chance to even get the safety off. But I can understand why you’re doing this. I suppose you’ll be wanting to stop the hunt and get them back to normal.”

  Mildred furrowed her brow. “Normal?”

  Bones grimaced. “You’re not going to like this, then, but don’t chill me out of anger, that’s all I ask. I’m not crazy about the idea, either. But there’s no telling Ethan when he gets an idea into—”

  “For God’s sake,” Mildred cut across him. “You’re as bad as Doc. Just cut to the chase and tell me what you mean.”

  So Bones haltingly told her about the hypnosis, diverting along the way to tell her how he discovered the secret on one of his expeditions. She cut him short on this.

  “What you’re saying is that Ryan, Krysty and Doc are now hunting Jak, and they won’t rest until he’s bought the farm, or they have.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Bones agreed. “I’m not there to vid it because Ethan thinks that’ll be bad for anyone watching, looking to buy a hunt. He just wants the action. Ironic, in a way. If not for that, you wouldn’t have caught up with me. I thought you knew about it, and that’s why you’re here…or is because of J.B.?”

  “What do you know about that?” Mildred questioned.

  Bones shrugged. “Only what you’ve figured out. He’s been keeping him alive to use as a tool, and now he’s got no use for him. And the only way you can get him better is to go into the old city. You got Michaela with you?” Mildred nodded. Bones shook his head. “She’s a good kid, and she doesn’t like Ethan. She’ll be a good guide. But I’m guessing you wanted the best.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Well, I don’t know if I still am. Old and blind, lady, old and blind. But Ethan’ll flay me alive for missing the hunt. You’ve got a blaster on me right now, and I read this old saying once about being hung for a sheep as a lamb. Didn’t quite grasp what that meant until now.”

  He stood slowly, holding his hands palm up and away from his body.

  “No tricks, no nothing. I’m not armed, and if you don’t feel happy with that, then—”

  Mildred didn’t know whether to trust him. He seemed to be too keen to get out of Pleasantville, a mite too quick to join forces with her. He had to have read that in her expression, because he chuckled.

  “I don’t blame you for being uneasy. It must seem like a rapid change of heart, especially when you consider I kinda had here everything I always wanted.” He looked wistfully around the room. “But they’re only things, when all is said and done. And if Ethan’s gonna buy me the farm anyway, I wouldn’t have ’em for much longer…And speaking of longer, if we don’t get it together and get the hell out of here, we’re not gonna have any kind of head start on the sec who’ll be chasing us.” He fixed her with a beady stare that was accentuated by the thick lenses of his glasses. “You’re gonna have to let me come with you or chill me. And you must’ve wanted me to come with you, otherwise why are you here?”

  Mildred shrugged. It was a fair point. She just hadn’t expected him to acquiesce so quickly. Maybe this damn place was making her too paranoid, and the sooner they got the hell out, the better it would be.

  “Will we need weapons in the old city?” she questioned.

  “It’d be preferable,” Bones answered with a shrug of his own.

  “Then grab something, and we’ll get going,” Mildred told him.

  The old man nodded and disappeared from the lounge for a moment as Mildred holstered her ZKR. Was she taking a chance in trusting him? Maybe, but right now, there wasn’t much choice. By the time these thoughts had passed through her head, Bones was back with a small Vortak precision pistol, the like of which Mildred had rarely seen, and a 14-shot Glock, which seemed to be the favored blaster of the ville. He noticed her looking.

  “We had a trader once who paid Ethan for a hunt with a cache of blasters he’d uncovered. All Glocks. And the ammo, it must’ve been some kind of old arms dump he’d stumbled on, or even a Glock factory for all I know. Weird, though…” he mused as he stowed the Vortak in a holster strapped to his calf, and shouldered a bag into which he placed the Glock and the spare ammo. “Still, doesn’t matter now,” he added brightly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  It was all Mildred could do to suppress a smile at the implied notion that it was her holding them up. They left the house through the back and, after a brief recce, made their way across to where Michaela was waiting with J.B.

  “Where have you been?” Michaela whispered, her nerves palpably showing. “I’ve been shitting myself in case someone came by. I hardly know how to use this thing, and if it brought a whole other load of sec around us—”

  “Quiet, girl,” Mildred said, placating the extremely frightened healer. “It seems that our friend here has his own reasons for wanting to join us, so that should make things easier now we’ve taken the time to have a few talks about it. Better to waste some time now than run into trouble later.”

  Michaela grunted and eyed up the old man with more than a hint of suspicion. Bones noted that, and a wry grin crossed his face.

  “Hey, you kept quiet about not agreeing with Ethan so you could keep your job and your hide. Ever cross your mind you weren’t the only one doing that?”

  Mildred was on one knee, checking J.B., who was muttering softly and incoherently in his sleep. “Never mind the recriminations,” she said with a note of anxiety in her voice, “we need to get moving. Bones, you know this place better than just about anyone, I’d guess. What’s the best route out for avoiding any trouble and moving quickly?”

  The old man sucked in his breath. “Those two don’t necessarily go together. There are some points where there isn’t much of a guard, and one or two blind spots. But with him on a stretcher they aren’t practical.”

  “Then give us something that is,” Mildred snapped.

  “I will if you let me think,” he returned quickly. “It’s not as easy as that. Ethan keeps this ville sewn up a lot tighter than most people know, but seeing as it’s the hunt, if…” His face lit up with a cunning grin as he realized something. “Yeah, this could be good. But we’ll have to hurry,” he added.

  Mildred took one end of the stretcher gurney while Michaela grabbed the other. Bones waited, barely patiently, then set off, gesturing them to follow. Neither woman had the slightest idea what he had in mind, but they had no option but to trust him at this moment.

  Bones led them through a maze of streets, pausing at every intersection to check that there was no one in sight, and gradually the wall around the ville became more and more visible, until it took up the whole of the horizon and they wer
e virtually beneath it. It loomed up over them, seemingly daunting and impossible to scale with the stretcher.

  The three of them, with J.B. barely conscious on his stretcher, stood at the end of an alley. In front of them was a stretch of bare earth that led to the wall, which was about fifteen feet in height and composed of scavenged brick, rock and lumps of reinforced concrete that had been somehow jammed and joined together to form a seemingly impassable barrier. Lookout posts along the wall were manned by SMGs mounted on tripods. Mildred couldn’t make them out from this distance, but she suspected that they may be old Thompsons, working on belt or drum ammo that had been traded from somewhere.

  The important point was that the posts were empty.

  “Knew it,” Bones rasped, his breathing coming heavy where he had exerted himself. “Ethan’s putting on a big show for big jack, and he’s pulled everyone over to the hunt. See, this isn’t as big a ville as he’d like everyone to think.” He grimaced as he sucked in more air. “If we can get up the wall, then we’ll be fine. There’s no chance of anyone getting back yet, it’s far too soon,” he added, checking his wrist chron.

  Mildred studied the wall, and then looked at Michaela, Bones and the prone J.B. The young healer was wiry, but her strength was an unknown quantity. Mildred had no doubt that she could make the climb on her own…but with the stretcher? That was a point of some contention. Mildred knew that she would need help with it, and Michaela was essential if they were to get J.B. over the wall. And then there was Bones. She no longer had any doubts about the old man’s sincerity, but looking at him—standing against the wall of a house, blowing hard and red in the face after such a short trek—she very much doubted if he could get over the wall under his own steam. Frankly, she’d back Doc over him any day; and Doc was always the wild card in such circumstances.

  Bones caught the look of apprehension in Mildred’s face and gave her a sly grin.

  “You didn’t think I was gonna make you climb that and haul your man here after you, did you?” he asked. “Come to that, you didn’t think I was up to doing that myself?” He paused, savoring Mildred’s discomfort as she tried to decide whether she should answer. He preempted her. “Listen, d’you really think that there’s only the one gate in and out of the city? How stupe would that be? Especially as the old city is behind this wall—on the far side of the gated wall—and we’re always bringing stuff back?”

  “There’s another way out?” Michaela asked, voicing the confusion Mildred was feeling. “But we always—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Bones cut in. “You kids are always risking climbing the wall and, to be honest, the sec ignore you ’cause they used to do the same thing. You get cut some slack here, after all. But that’s not what I mean. Y’see, in order to get things into the ville and not have to risk riding them around the walls, and also to have a little something up his sleeve if ever we came under attack, Ethan had a tunnel constructed under the wall. Only the salvage squads know about it, and they keep quiet because they don’t want to incur the baron’s wrath.”

  “And you know about it, too,” Mildred said. It was a statement rather than a question.

  Bones tapped the side of his nose. “Who taught these fuckers all that they know?”

  “Well, stop talking about it and lead us to it.” Mildred sighed. She could hear the faint sounds of the cheering crowds from the far side of the ville and was aware of the uneasy feeling in her gut that told her not only was there very little time to waste, but that the sounds were those of her friends in peril. She’d feel cleaner, more useful, once they were out in the old city, making some kind of progress.

  All this went through her mind in the split second it took Bones to beckon them to follow him.

  The old man led them off at a tangent, cutting across the open ground until they reached the area underneath one of the gun emplacements and lookout posts. He slowed as they approached the wall, Michaela and Mildred wheeling J.B. as quickly as possible across the rough ground. They avoided jarring the ailing Armorer as much as possible, but there were still a few rough patches of ground that made him moan as his body was jolted on the gurney.

  Bones was waiting for them to catch up, a sly grin on his face. He was standing in front of an area of concrete that spread out around the base of the emplacement. It seemed solid enough, but there was something about the arrangement of dirt covering it that seemed to Mildred’s eyes to be almost artful. It took her a few seconds to realize that, unlike the rest of the area around, this section of concrete was covered by dirt that carried no human or animal tracks, suggesting that it had recently been recovered to make it blend in.

  A smile similar to the old man’s flashed across Mildred’s face. “Nice,” she said simply. “Very nice.”

  “I thought you’d appreciate it,” Bones replied as he bent and pulled at a seam in the concrete floor, barely visible through the layer of dirt. The slab started to lift, and the sweat started to bead the old man’s forehead. “Guess I’m not as strong as I used to be,” he gasped. “Someone give me a hand.”

  Mildred stepped forward, first casting a glance at Michaela so that the healer should know to keep an eye on the old man, just in case. It wasn’t that Mildred didn’t trust him, just that the air of paranoia about Pleasantville was still infecting her. She stood beside Bones and locked her fingers under the ridged edge of the concrete. It was heavier than she had expected, being a good two inches thick, and she was a little surprised at how far he’d managed to lift it on his own. Together, they heaved, muscles straining to get the slab up.

  Then it gave way in a sudden lack of resistance, and the momentum they had built up made them both topple backward into the dirt. Mildred cursed loudly and rolled out of the way of the slab, thinking that it would fall on top of them, and was surprised to see that Bones stayed where he had fallen.

  “Move, you dumb old coot,” she yelled, for a moment feeling exactly as if she was talking to Doc.

  “Ta-da!” Bones said by way of reply, laughing and holding his arms aloft as the slab stopped about two feet from his face. He wriggled out from beneath its shadow and got to his feet, dusting himself down. “Guess I forgot to add that it was hinged,” he said with a disarming mildness. “You wouldn’t have been so worried about me then, would you?”

  Mildred bit back the angry reply that sprang to her tongue. This was no time for playing games. She walked over to where the slab had now formed a hinged trapdoor. It led down a shallow slope that doglegged into a tunnel about five feet high and four feet wide, the earthen sides shored up by timber and concrete struts.

  “It’s safer than it looks,” Bones commented, taking in her expression of doubt. “We’ve used it for a long time, and worked out how small we could make it and still get all the old shit we wanted through there. That way, if anyone on the other side found it, it wouldn’t give them that much in the way of access, and all we’d have to do is fire the damn tunnel.”

  Mildred looked down into the narrow depths. Certainly, anything that was in there if it was fired wouldn’t last for long before buying the farm. A shiver ran down her spine when she thought that she, Michaela and John would be down there in a moment.

  “What about light?” Mildred asked, shaking off her fears to address the practical issues. “And where does it come out?”

  Bones looked thoughtful. “Torches, usually old ones we’ve charged from generators—I figured out how to recharge old predark batteries a long while back. Can’t use naked flame, it takes the oxygen out too quickly, and the smoke is a killer. No ventilation, see?”

  “So do you have a torch?” Mildred asked, knowing that she and Michaela had no such items.

  Bones shook his head. “Didn’t think to pack one. I was a little surprised by you, after all. But don’t worry, it’s not a tunnel of great length, and there are no branches. You’re not likely to get lost down there,” he added wryly. “And don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark.”

  Mildred glared at
him. “Not funny, Bones. We’ve got a sick man to transport, and the last thing we want is any of us stumbling on roots or rocks and twisting an ankle. So if this tunnel isn’t that long, tell me where it comes out.”

  Bones held up his hands placatingly. “Whoa, sorry. Guess I’m just a little shocked at myself for doing this. As to where it comes out—just on the other side of this wall is a five-hundred-yard zone that was cleared to provide a lack of cover for anything or anyone that may want to sneak up on the ville wall. On the edge of that zone is the remains of an old building that was razed to mark the end of the zone. The cellar is still intact, and the tunnel comes out into that cellar. The entrance is disguised on the old ground floor of the building. If you want to know for sure how far we’re going to have to go in the dark, I’d say to add on another couple of hundred yards as it doesn’t go straight, and we need to get past the wall from this side.”

  The old man’s tone had switched and become more serious as he discussed the obstacle they faced. Mildred listened intently. They’d have to hurry to get out of sight before the sec guard returned to the wall on this side of the ville, but at the same time too much haste could lead to an accident in the darkness. It was a hell of a distance to cover in the dark, with a sick man on a stretcher.

  “What about the entrance on the other end. Think it’ll be like this one?” Mildred asked.

  Bones looked thoughtful. “Didn’t expect this one to be so stiff. It suggests there hasn’t been anyone going into the old city for some time. Mebbe we’ll have to really put our shoulders to the other end to open it. Should be like this one, though. Get it past a certain point and it’ll give with its own momentum.”