Siren Song

by James Axler

  Nancy leaped, spinning through the air as the shotgun’s discharge raced toward her, passing over its deadly issue. She landed eight feet from J.B., and he snapped the trigger again as she danced toward him. Nancy slipped past the blast with a fraction of an inch to spare, the shot peppering the side of the Regina’s white tower.

  The other Melissas were out of the tower now, too, running at J.B., a fourth one joining them from wherever she had been posted within. People peered down from the overhead walkways, dismayed by all that was happening in their peaceful, ordered community.

  J.B. ducked as Nancy leaped at him, her right leg sweeping up to kick his head. Had it met, J.B. had no doubt that the blow would have taken his head from his shoulders; as it was, his reaction time was just enough to slip him beneath its punishing blow.

  The Melissa followed up with a second kick, pivoting on her right leg as it met the floor and snapping out with her left. J.B. grunted as Nancy’s heel met him high in the chest, sending him lurching backward. He stroked the M-4000’s trigger again, sending another burst of shot at his attacker.

  Nancy weaved in place, letting the wide burst of fire zip past her by the slimmest margin. Then the other three Melissas were with her, swarming on J.B.—swarming like angry bees.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  And then everything started to blow up.

  Black smoke poured from the honey storage tower and, simultaneously, two of the nearby towers exploded, their bases erupting into flame.

  J.B. was thrown to the ground by the force of the blasts, and around him all four Melissas tottered and fell as if caught in an earthquake.

  Seconds later, the Regina emerged from the palace tower in a sweep of yellow-and-black robes. “What is happening?” she shrieked. As she did, her eyes swept across the panorama of devastation—the Melissas, her personal guard augmented by the powers of royal jelly, lying on the ground amid billowing trails of smoke, the flames licking at the lower levels of two of the nearby towers, the dark smoke emanating from the precious honey store.

  “My honey!” she cried, her eyes fixing on the last of these. “My...honey!”

  Lying on his back in the dirt, J.B. struggled to make sense of things. He saw the Regina moving in a blur of yellow and black toward the honey store, and he took a moment to fire his shotgun. The Regina leaped the discharge without even turning, her awareness augmented to superhuman levels by her constant imbibing of the irradiated honey. Out of ammo, J.B. watched her go, her long golden skirts trailing behind her like a pointed tail, the black stripes running up her slender body.

  Then Nancy recovered from where she had fallen, and she stomped toward J.B. as he reloaded the M-4000.

  * * *

  INSIDE THE HONEY store, Ryan ran a flaming torch along the wooden walls of the lower level, setting light to everything he could as he backed toward the exit. The torch was made from the blanket he had used to disguise his Steyr, wrapped around a hunk of wood he had broken from a door frame in one of the rooms. He had already been through the whole storeroom, checking to confirm there were no other people working there, and had tipped as much of the honey from the clay containers as he could without slowing his pace. Now black smoke billowed all around, flames licking the wooden walls, and the whole atmosphere was heavy with the cloying sweetness of warmed honey.

  Ryan could still make it out through the main door. He had plotted a route before starting the fires, moving backward through the tower, ensuring that the space behind him was not alight. But the fire was spreading fast, running up the walls and sending red-gold tendrils into the final corridor.

  There was a pop as the flames caught a knot of wood close to Ryan’s ear, and a burst of sparks spit across the floor. He had done what he could; it was time to go.

  Tossing the flaming torch into the open doorway of the closest storage room, Ryan turned. He saw her immediately—the woman in the yellow-and-black dress, marching down the warren-like corridor toward him as black smoke painted the air. The Regina had arrived to save the honey or to chill the man who had destroyed it.

  “Violator!” the Regina railed. “After all I have given to you and your friends, you spurn my love. After all I gave, without asking a thing in return.”

  “You asked everything,” Ryan told her. “You asked for our humanity, our will, our very souls. You’re just too caught up in the mind poison to see it.”

  “You’ve destroyed what it has taken years to build and to harvest,” the Regina thundered, blocking the narrow corridor. Ryan’s only exit was past her, through her.

  “We’re saving you,” Ryan told her, “from a fate you can no longer comprehend.” As he spoke, he reached for the SIG Sauer holstered at his hip.

  “Saving?” the Regina snarled, gesturing to the flames. “With destruction? This is the way of the old world, Ryan, not our glorious new age. The days of destruction are over—harmony shall rule humankind.”

  “Your glorious new age is at an end, your highness,” Ryan said, raising the SIG Sauer to target the Regina. “Aborted before it can spread any further.” He fired, sending a single 9 mm Parabellum bullet at the Regina’s forehead.

  The Regina blurred, her head moving so swiftly to avoid the bullet that it seemed as if there were three of her standing in the smoke. Then, in less than a heartbeat, she had traveled the length of the burning corridor and was on top of Ryan. He gasped, seeing the blur of the woman’s arms as they cleaved the air to bat his SIG Sauer aside.

  * * *

  MILDRED PLACED THE charges the way J.B. had shown her, depositing them around the medical tower working from the center outward and targeting the major support beams. She set the timer for ninety seconds.

  As the timer began its countdown, Mildred took one last look around the lobby. It was sterile in its cleanliness, free of dirt and debris. The Trai had found something special here, used it to the advantage of everyone, securing wonderful health for all. But it had come at a price—the lost of their individuality.

  For a moment Mildred wondered if she might take some of the medicine from one of the rooms with a view to studying it, synthesizing it, perhaps recreating it. But no. It had to be destroyed. Everything here had to be destroyed. It was the only way to be sure they had stopped the evil from spreading.

  Mildred stepped from the tower as the timer reached sixty seconds and ran out into the burning plaza beyond where the other towers were beginning to crumble in on themselves amid eight-foot-high flames.

  It was over. Heaven was falling down.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE THE VILLE walls, Ricky was preparing to set light to the last of the hives, covering it with a liquid accelerant he and J.B. had found in the redoubt. Behind him, eleven hives belched dark smoke into the air in trailing streamers, their occupants burning up within, just a tiny percentage escaping the fury of the infernos.

  As Ricky finished smothering the last hive with accelerant, two Melissas sprinted toward him from their sentry post at the ville gates. Ricky remembered the altercation in the redoubt, remembered everything that J.B. had told him about these women and their phenomenal speed, and he whipped off two quick shots from his Webley, shooting straight from the hip.

  One Melissa went down, her flowing white robes fluttering around her like fog. But the second seemed to jump over the bullet meant for her, leaping high in the air and coming down just feet from where Ricky stood.

  “¡Madre di satanás!” Ricky breathed, and he fired again, sending another .45 slug toward the beautiful, pale-skinned woman.

  The Melissa stepped back, flicking her left hand out in a move that resembled a judo chop. Ricky heard a whip crack of air, and suddenly his bullet was zipping uselessly away in a new direction where the woman had knocked it from its trajectory.

  “Impossible,” Ricky muttered, raising the Webley and reeling off another
shot. He moved the weapon left and right as he fired two bullets at the fast-moving woman.

  Kicking one heel against the ground, the Melissa leaped up and over Ricky’s head. As she did so, one of the bullets clipped her right leg and a trail of blood followed as she soared through the air.

  Spinning to follow her, Ricky threw the last of the accelerant at the Melissa as she landed beside the hive. At the same time, he pulled the trigger of his blaster again, sending another bullet screaming from the chamber—but this time he aimed not at the Melissa but at the ground where he had spilled the accelerant. The bullet struck the accelerant and, before the superhuman sec woman could even register what was happening, she lit up like a human torch, shrieking in untold agony.

  Ricky stepped back from the blaze, watching as the woman went up in flames. She stumbled on unsteady legs for a moment before crashing into the beehive. The accelerant on the beehive caught fire in an instant, and suddenly the conflagration was doubled, turning from the single figure of the flaming Melissa into a funeral pyre. The burning forms of bees rushed at the woman as their artificial nest blazed, stinging her before crashing to the ground as blackened husks.

  Ricky watched all of this without emotion, quickly reloading his Webley revolver. Behind him, the last Melissa stared with sightless eyes, a red-rimmed hole in the center of her forehead where Ricky’s first bullet had chilled her. Speed wasn’t everything—ruthlessness could win the day in the Deathlands. Survival was everything, and he had learned that from the best.

  * * *

  RYAN WAS DOING all he could to avoid the punishing attacks of the Regina in the burning honey store. The woman moved in a blur, faster than Ryan’s eye could follow. It was all he could do to block as she kicked and punched him backward, forcing him deeper into the burning tower.

  A savage kick to his chest sent Ryan tumbling back, and he slammed against a burning wall as black smoke billowed around him. He struggled away, patting at his smoldering coat, sinking to the floor.

  “You still love me,” the Regina stressed. “You still feel the love that will save you.”

  Ryan did. He could feel the emotion tugging at him—adoration for this woman who was trying to chill him.

  No. I have to see past it, Ryan reminded himself. Have to remember what this woman is—what all these people have become.

  “You will obey me,” the Regina instructed. “You will execute the violators of my law—for love is stronger than the bonds of friendship.”

  Slumped by the burning wall, Ryan’s hand slipped to the sheath on his thigh, and he tried to remember what it was he had been thinking before the Regina’s words started buzzing in his mind.

  Adoration is not love. Blind devotion is not love.

  The Regina stood over him as the walls burned, red-gold flames highlighting her perfectly coiffed blond hair. “Love me,” she instructed.

  “No,” Ryan snarled, powering his fist up with all his strength until it met the Regina’s jaw with a loud crack.

  “I love Krysty,” Ryan told the Regina as she stumbled back, astonished.

  “Die!” the Regina yelled, leaping for Ryan, her hands hooked like talons.

  Ryan let her drop onto him, using her weight to thrust the blade of his panga into her gut. “You first,” Ryan replied, forcing the blade in deep.

  * * *

  J.B. HAD RELOADED and blasted off a single shot from the M-4000 before Nancy reached him. The blast had been almost at ground level where J.B. was lying in the dirt, and Nancy had stepped over it easily. Then she was on him, yanking the Armorer from the ground with one powerful hand, swiping his blaster away with the other.

  “Violator!” Nancy screeched. “Look at the damage you have caused.” She slapped his face, left then right then left again, forcing J.B. to turn his head. “Do you have anything to say for yourself before I execute you in the name of the Regina’s love?”

  “Going to...thank...me,” J.B. muttered through bloodied lips, “tomorrow.”

  Nancy pressed her free hand against the Armorer’s face, shoving his glasses aside and pushing her fingers against his eyes and under his lips the way a man would grab a predark bowling ball. J.B. fought to get free, but the woman was impossibly strong, and her grip on his clothes held him above the ground so that he could not get any leverage. He growled through gritted teeth as he felt the woman’s fingers press against his eyeballs.

  And then, without warning, another explosion rocked the ville, and J.B. felt Nancy’s grip loosen. It was the medical faculty blowing up and caving in on itself, the last but one tower to be destroyed by the companions.

  J.B. took advantage of his foe’s momentary surprise, kicking out against her shins with all the force he could muster. He felt her grip slip from his face and he kicked out again, launching himself from her grasp and tumbling back hard against the ground.

  There were three other Melissas with Nancy, and when J.B. looked he saw them stalking toward him.

  “And me without my shotgun,” he muttered as he reached into his jacket for his other weapon of choice, a Mini-Uzi.

  As he did so, the Melissas swooped toward him, white robes billowing like wings, dancing across the ground like birds taking flight. In that moment, J.B. could not deny that they looked beautiful—the perfect idealization of the human form, angels descended from Heaven. He raised the Uzi and held down the trigger, sweeping the weapon in a swift arc.

  * * *

  THE REGINA SQUIRMED at the end of Ryan’s blade as he wrenched it across her stomach, creating a ghastly, bloody wound.

  The Regina was fast, but speed couldn’t save her up close like this. No amount of superhealing was going to stem the flow of blood that rushed from the awful rent in her gut.

  Ryan stepped away, yanking his blade free. The Regina collapsed, her mouth stretched open in silent agony, blood cascading down her torn dress.

  “Your empire’s over,” Ryan told her as flames licked at the wooden walls and ceiling of the narrow corridor. “Your dream of spreading is finished.”

  The Regina looked at Ryan with desperate eyes, her hands clenched around the wound in her gut. “Love me,” she croaked. “Love the Home.”

  “No,” Ryan told her as he wiped the blood from his blade and sheathed it. “I’m going to burn it down.”

  Ryan stepped over the fallen queen and hurried down the burning corridor, running toward the exit where daylight shone through the flaming doorway.

  * * *

  BULLETS WERE FLYING everywhere. J.B. zipped through a whole magazine just keeping the Melissas at bay.

  But bullets were coming from another direction, too—and more than one, in fact.

  Mildred, Doc and Jak had joined the fight, gathering at the plaza after completing their respective missions. It was like shooting fish in a barrel—the companions were the only ones who were armed, and while the rest of the population of Heaven Falls had finally realized that their best option was to run away unless the Regina told them different, it left the superhuman Melissas fending off an attack from all fronts.

  Rearmed, Jak threw two of his leaf-bladed knives, and they drummed into the throat and breast of one of the Melissas.

  Doc fired his replica LeMat, sending a devastating .44-caliber lead slug into—and through—another Melissa’s back, turning her guts into offal in a blinding flash.

  Mildred showed more finesse than her companions. As the towers collapsed around the plaza, she reeled off carefully placed shots at Nancy and the other remaining Melissa, clipping one of them in the flank but missing the fast-moving Nancy by an inch.

  Nancy flew at J.B. in a rush of speed and anger. The Armorer dropped back, feeling the ground slam against his back and shoulders as he tossed the empty Uzi aside. Then the Melissa was on him, clawing at his face like a wild animal. J.B. punched her hard in the
gut, and she momentarily fell back. As she did so, Jak drilled a throwing knife into her right eye socket, ending the Melissa’s attack.

  At that moment Ryan came crashing through the flaming doorway of the burning storage tower. His clothes were blackened with smoke and so was his face, the skin red beneath. He was clearly exhausted. But he was alive.

  The one-eyed man staggered away from the burning tower as it began to lurch behind him. And then, as J.B. watched, a second figure emerged through the fire, her trailing dress alight with flames.

  “Ryan!” J.B. shouted in warning.

  Ryan turned but he was slow now, exhausted from all he had been through. The Regina of Heaven Falls, the queen bee, was on him in an instant, her burning flesh reaching for his.

  But it only lasted an instant. Another figure was there, one that had not been there just seconds before, and this one, too, had brought flames with her: the flame-red locks of her flowing hair. It was Krysty, running at speed through the debris of the crumbling towers. She met with the Regina just as the woman reached for Ryan, body slamming into her like a speeding freight train hitting a cow that had strayed onto the tracks.

  The Regina lurched backward, her feet scrambling for purchase on the ash-strewed ground. Krysty kept moving, knocking into the woman again, driving her fist into the Regina’s jaw.

  “Stay the hell away from Ryan,” Krysty shouted. “Get out of our heads.”

  The Regina crashed back into the crumbling storage tower, the fire licking at her flesh and clothes. Standing in front of her, Krysty pivoted and kicked, driving her booted foot into the woman’s wounded belly. The Regina hurtled back through the doorway of the tower and the flames roared brighter, hiding the doorway forever behind their burning curtain.

  A loud crack shook the air, and Krysty turned and ran, grabbing Ryan by the collar of his coat as she did so. Behind them, the storage tower crumbled in on itself, its integrity ruined by fire, collapsing in a pillar of flame.