Axler, James - Deathlands 65 - Hellbenders

by Hellbenders [lit]

  Danny smiled. "Figure it's the other way around."

  But the smile was driven from his face when a voice from behind them caused them both to whirl round in shock.

  "I figure it doesn't matter which way around you want it, 'cause neither of you may get out of here alive—especially if you get smart," the voice added as Dean went for his Hi-Power.

  He let his hand drop as their adversary, now stepping from behind one of the drapes, showed herself. Danny cursed, That was always his hiding place, and he should have figured on checking that one.

  Chapter Ten

  Apart from the fact that she was holding an old Thompson submachine gun—immaculately polished but still with a dulled air of danger about the gray gunmetal—and had a set, hard expression, Dean would never have imagined her to be a threat. But threat she most certainly was. He carefully withdrew his hand from his holstered Hi-Power.

  "It's okay, don't panic. I'm just taking my hand away, okay?"

  "I can see that, stupe, I'm not blind," she spit pithily, without changing her expression.

  "Shit, I can't believe that I was that much of a stupe not to check it out," Danny said, ignoring the other two and banging his hand down on the bench that held the comp. At the sudden slap, the girl turned the barrel of her Thompson away from Dean, and the young Cawdor reached immediately for the Browning. Catching this from the corner of her eye, she swung the machine blaster back toward Dean, but not before he had the Browning clear of the holster and leveled in her direction.

  "Stalemate?" he questioned, echoing something his father had said a few days before.

  "Mebbe, mebbe not. What's to stop me blasting you now?"

  "You don't want the sec coming in here. If we're not supposed to be here, then neither are you, right?" he asked, directing the last toward Danny.

  "Nice try, dude, but it won't work," Danny replied, shaking his head slowly. "Not if that's who I think it is."

  "And who's that?" Dean shot back, his confidence rattled. Danny looked the girl up and down. She was about fifteen, dressed in a cropped T-shirt with sequins that clung to the swell of her breasts and left exposed a tanned and taut abdomen. Her jeans were old denim, bleached and ripped by use, but sewn through with golden threads. On her feet she wore exquisite velvet pumps that had enabled her to move quietly, but also suggested that she hadn't come from a great distance, or that she was used to roughing it across rough ground.

  "She's a few years older now, and a shitload more beautiful—"

  "That ain't gonna pull no weight," she interrupted.

  Danny held up his hands. "Who says I was trying to? Mebbe I mean it. But you are, aren't you?"

  Her face split into a lopsided grin but the blaster remained steady. "Yeah, and I remember you, too. Hell, you were the reason I learned to get in here. You were how I learned to get in here! Never thought I'd see you again, Danny."

  Dean sighed, and looked to the ceiling. "You know, I'm sure this is all fine and dandy for you two, but seeing as we're standing here at blasterpoint and we may get interrupted any second, it'd be kind of nice if someone told me what the hell was going on?"

  Danny cut to the chase. "Her name's Ayesha, and she's Baron Al's youngest sprog. Only daughter, too. Hence the fine clothes and the ability to carry such a fancy blaster. But not why she's here."

  Her brow furrowed. "In what way?"

  "Well, I remember what Baron Al was like, right? Now, I may have been away awhile, but I'd be willing to bet my life that the old bastard hasn't changed that much. And the two things he was sure of were that he didn't like girls hanging around anything important, and that this place was out of bounds to everyone in the whole damn ville unless he was with them."

  Ayesha pursed her lips. "Fuck it," she said softly. "I guess you've got me there." But her grip on the machine blaster didn't waver.

  "Okay," Dean said carefully, starting to get a little weary of the situation. "Let's see if I've got this straight. We're not supposed to be here, and you're not supposed to be here, and we're all in the shit if we get found. Am I right?"

  Ayesha nodded agreement.

  "Right," Dean continued, "so I reckon it'd be better for all of us if you put that blaster down and we started from there. It's not going to do any of us any good if we get snuck up on by the sec because we're so busy eyeballing each other. Am I right again?"

  Reluctantly, the girl lowered the Thompson. "Guess so," she said simply.

  There was an almost palpable lowering of tension in the room.

  Dean returned his attention to the cables, linking them and tapping a few commands into the keyboard of the comp he was manning as he said, "So I guess you know why we're here. You were listening, right?" he added to her quizzical expression as he looked up. "So you know about Correll, the Hellbenders and everything?"

  "Kinda," she answered. "I didn't know that they existed. I figured—like everyone else here, I guess—that once all you guys disappeared into the desert, then that was it. Time to buy the farm."

  "Should have been," Danny agreed, "but I guess we got lucky." Despite his best efforts, he couldn't keep the slightest tinge of cynicism from invading the latter statement.

  Ayesha seized on it. "I heard what you were saying about Correll being obsessed…mebbe he is, but mebbe that's a good thing."

  "Why?"

  She shrugged. "I've got reasons."

  Dean moved over to the other comp and tapped in a few commands on that keyboard. "Check it out," he said, trying to bring the conversation back onto some kind of track. "They're networking, Danny."

  "Shit!" The teenager's attention was immediately taken by the old tech. He looked at the monitor. "Sweet fuckin' murder, you've actually done it. How the hell did you do that?" he added, glancing at Dean.

  "If you were paying more attention to this than to her, then you'd know," Dean said in an acid tone. "Now look, I can show you how to do this when we get back to the redoubt, as long as we have these," he continued, detaching the cables and putting them in his backpack along with a sheaf of papers from those Danny had taken from the filing cabinet. "That isn't a problem. Getting out of here and back to the rendezvous in one piece is—especially now that we have this little problem." He indicated Ayesha.

  "She's not a problem," Danny said softly. "Shit, I can remember when I used to sneak about in here and I'd see her sometimes with Baron Al, if she was tagging along with him. And then I'd see her in his palace, when I was with my dad. She's only a kid, Dean."

  "With a big blaster," the young Cawdor pointed out.

  "Mebbe, but—"

  "But nothing, you stupe," Ayesha butted in. "Listen, you think I never saw you when you were hiding here? I always wondered how you got in, what you wanted. I used to follow you. Why the fuck do you think I come here now? Because I got interested in trying to use this shit, that's why."

  "But you never gave me away," Danny said, incredulously.

  "Of course not, you fuckwit. I was fascinated by you, and then by this. I wanted to learn, I wanted to come out and tell you I was watching. And now you're here with this story about these guys called Hellbenders—"

  "No story—it's truth," Danny said quickly.

  "Whatever, it's come at just the right time."

  At first, neither Dean nor Danny caught her meaning. Then it dawned on the young Cawdor, who said slowly, "You mean your own father would sell you?"

  She nodded. "Hell yeah. I'm a big prize to those coldheart bastards. Daughter of a baron and not yet been screwed? Prize meat and big jack…the full shit. That's why I haven't chilled you or called sec. I could always make some excuse about seeing someone come in here and following them in, if it came to it. No, I've got other ideas. What do you say we make a bargain?"

  "What kind?" Dean asked.

  "You're gonna be mounting a raid on the convoy, right? Well, when you do, you make sure that me and the girls get away—the wag we're being carried in gets left alone and we get the chance to make a run."
/>   "You've heard what Danny said about Correll," Dean replied, shaking his head. "I can't make guarantees about someone like that."

  "That's okay." She shrugged. "You do what you can. It's a better chance than we'd have anyway."

  "Okay, so that's what you get. What about us?" Danny questioned.

  "You get to get away from here right now." She smiled. "I can guarantee you safe passage to wherever the hell you want to go. And when the raid takes place, you don't have to worry about the wag with the girls as I'll take care of the sec."

  Dean eyed the Thompson and tried to figure the chances on the sec guard being back on duty at the place where they had made their entry. He looked at Danny. "I figure we could go for that, right?"

  Danny assented. "Not that we get a lot of choice," he added, giving Ayesha a look that suggested he was quite happy with that option.

  She grinned. "That's settled, then. So if you've finished frigging around with all those cables, I figure we'd better get our asses out of here triple sharp."

  "Any reason?" Dean queried as he shouldered his backpack.

  "Way things are at the moment, my beloved father has been taking solace in this building, away from the troubles outside. He's really gone into himself, and turns up here at all hours of the day and night. It's okay for me, 'cause I can use all the hiding places, but three of us trying to hide in here may get a touch noticeable."

  "Fair point," Dean agreed. "So how do we get out of here?"

  "Not the same way you got in, if you're still using that stupe method you used to," Ayesha remarked to Danny.

  "Sounds like it served you well enough," he countered, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  "That was until I found this," she returned with a grin. "Follow me."

  Leaving them almost in her wake, Ayesha turned, shouldering the Thompson as she did, and made her way toward the door they had used on the way in. She paused at the mezzanine, listening for any sec that may be outside, on the main factory floor. There was no sound.

  Unwilling to speak in the quiet, in case it reverberated and in some way alerted anyone outside, Dean gave her a questioning expression. Ayesha returned it with a smile, and beckoned them on with a crooked index finger.

  Opening the door, she went onto the fire escape, which led to the mezzanine from the floor of the old building, but instead of continuing down the staircase, she swung herself over it and hung underneath. Once there, holding herself by one hand, she opened a window that should have been barred and covered like the others.

  And so it would appear from the outside, but the nails that had held the thin metal covering sheet in place had long since oxidized into rust, and it had been simple for Ayesha to prise the sheet loose. Dean wondered why and how she had discovered this, but decided that now wasn't the time to ask such questions.

  The sheet swung, pivoted on one nail, revealing an open frame to the outside that was high enough above eye level not to be noticeable unless you looked up, and faced onto the alleyway at the side of the building, where there was little chance of anyone passing by, and where the sec men, softened by years of inactivity, never thought to look.

  Ayesha swung herself through, balancing on the frame as she reached out to pull at a silken thread that hung close to the wall. This was attached to an old fire-escape ladder of the retractable sort, which should in theory have been rusted up and noisy to extend.

  The manner in which she turned and winked at them before pulling the thread suggested that she had returned several times under the cover of darkness to grease the metal. The ladder extended swiftly and silently to the ground. Ayesha swung herself out onto the ladder, and beckoned the two young men to follow with a gesture. Dean was first, negotiating the obstacle with ease and coming out onto the ladder. Danny was a little more hesitant, but gritted his teeth and followed. When both of them were on the ladder, Ayesha leaned across and pulled the metal sheet into place. She covered the alleyway as Dean and Danny dropped down to the ground, and then followed them, sending the ladder back up to its destination with a tug of the cord. When the ladder had settled, the cord hung limply against the wall, and if anyone had noticed it, they would have assumed nothing more than that it was just a piece of old twine hanging from part of a decaying and disused building.

  Ayesha led the way to the front of the old building, checking that the sec man on duty was paying little attention to the side, and then beckoned the two youths to follow her as she slipped onto the thoroughfare which, although by no means crowded, was busy enough for them to get lost in quite easily.

  "That wasn't at all bad," Danny sniffed dismissively.

  "Bad nothing, you stupe bastard," Ayesha snapped back. "I'd like to see you do better. That method you had of getting in—you went by the old tunnel, right?—is so frigging dangerous. Second time I tried it I nearly got caught, and I vowed that I'd find a better way then."

  "So how the hell did you find that the window barrier was loose in that position?" Dean asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

  She shrugged. "It let in light where it wasn't tight anymore. Saw it one day when I was trying to get in—trying to avoid the sec by going your way," she added with a grin directed at Danny. "Just had to take a look at the outside, see where the window came out. It was perfect."

  "You're pretty damn smart," Dean remarked.

  "For a girl?" she snapped back, with anger flashing in her eyes.

  Dean pulled a pained expression. "Hot pipe, Baron Al must have given you some shit for being a girl. That wasn't what I meant at all. Fact is, you're pretty damn smart for anyone, I'd figure."

  "That's okay, then," she said, calming slightly. By now, they had moved away from the old industrial area and back into the main residential and barter sector of the ville. As they passed by, there were a few glances shot their way by people who had recognized Ayesha as the baron's daughter. But such was the fear they had of Al Jourgensen that they dare not approach her.

  "Is it me, or is this getting a little uncomfortable?" Dean commented.

  Danny was busy looking at Ayesha, who was returning his admiration. "No, I don't reckon so," he answered.

  "That's because you haven't been paying attention to the people around us," Dean snapped. "Listen, Ayesha, you're going to land us right in shit with the sec, because we need to blend in with the background until we get back to the rendezvous point, and you're really making us stand out."

  "Tough," she answered with a pout. "Look, I just want to get some reassurance from the others in your party that the deals on."

  "I've said so, haven't I?" Danny said.

  "No offense, but you're not exactly in charge, are you?" Ayesha pointed out bluntly. "And neither are you," she added to Dean.

  "Fair enough," the younger Cawdor commented. "I can understand that—but you're gonna get us into trouble before we reach the rendezvous at this rate."

  "Okay, tell me where the rendezvous point is," she said testily, and when Dean had informed her, she continued, "I can get us there without anyone seeing, so stop moaning, stupe."

  Dean shrugged. Looking at the way Danny was staring at Ayesha, and her determination to relay her terms to the rest of the recce party, there was little he could do. He agreed with ill grace, and let her lead the way.

  Ayesha took them away from the main drag of the ville, circumventing the crowded center, and around quieter areas that were not occupied during the day, as the inhabitants of Charity went about their daily business in the centers of commerce and trade. They were able to make rapid and unseen progress, and were soon at the edge of the ville.

  "We've just got to wait for the sec patrol to pass, and then we can make the distance," she whispered as they waited by a low adobe wall, sheltered from the track around the outer edges of the ville that was used by the motorbike sec patrol. There was no sign of their companions by the outcrop that they had used as shelter, but then, they wouldn't expect it any other way.

  The minutes
seemed to crawl by until the sec patrol roared into view, coming from opposite directions. Despite this, they all knew that there wouldn't have been enough time to make the distance without being spotted; and so they waited impatiently for the bikers to cross, cursing every word they paused to mutter to each other in their boredom, unaware that their perimeters had been breached.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the bikers set off in opposing directions, to continue their sec circuit of the ville.

  "Let's go," Dean barked, breaking into a jog trot as they began to cover the distance to the outcrop cover that was being used by the recce party. As Ayesha and Danny tried to keep pace, Dean wondered if the others had fared well in their part of the mission—indeed, even if they had made it back alive.

  A question that was answered as they reached the seemingly deserted rendezvous. From out of nowhere— at least, nowhere they could see—Doc's voice sounded low and amused.

  "Well, well, my young gentlemen, what do we have here? I had no idea that we had to bring back souvenirs."

  Chapter Eleven

  "What the hell have you done now, Danny?" Lonnie growled as he moved from out of cover and into an area where Dean could see him.

  "I've done nothing," Danny replied defensively.

  "Then what do you call that?" Lonnie countered angrily. He came down from a point of cover, his blaster waving angrily. Behind them, and to one side, Doc, Jak, Mik and Tilly also slipped out of cover until they formed a circle around the returning trio.

  Considering the hostility she faced, and the fact that she was now surrounded by the recce party, Ayesha kept herself cool. The Thompson remained on her shoulder, and although she felt anger at the reaction, she didn't let it show.

  "I've got a name…and I've got a reason for being here," she replied calmly. Dean noticed that her cool manner made Danny cast further admiring glances at her.

  "It's gonna have to be good," Mik murmured, making sure that Ayesha was more than aware of the fact that his blaster was leveled at her by gesturing with it as he spoke.