Axler, James - Deathlands 65 - Hellbenders

by Hellbenders [lit]

  Elias Tulk was not a happy man because of the chem storm. The interference was so bad that he had been unable to contact Papa Joe and let him know that the convoy had left as planned, undeterred by the aftermath of the storm. The radio that Correll had given him when he had first been recruited by the Hellbenders was now lying in his bunk back in Summerfield. It was too risky to carry it with him, and it had proved useless earlier that morning, when he had made one last attempt at contact.

  Tulk had been recruited by a recce mission, willing to change sides and act undercover because Hutter had taken Tulk's wife for his own, simply because he took a fancy to her. But the woman had been unwilling, and for disloyalty to the baron, Hutter had made Tulk shoot her in the head. The memory of her eyes, staring imploringly into his own as he squeezed the trigger on the 9 mm Luger and blew her brains from the side of her head, still haunted him. He hated himself for not refusing the baron, and hated the baron for turning him into the kind of spineless automaton that would follow from fear. He didn't care whether he bought the farm on this day, only that Hutter's little empire should collapse.

  Which was why he was fretting about not being able to contact the Hellbenders. He hoped that they would take the same chance as Hutter, and set off anyway.

  The concern had to have shown on his face as he piloted the wag across the desert, for Hutter spoke.

  "Elias, you look like something's troubling you, boy. Why don't you tell your old daddy what it is, now."

  "Nothing much, Baron," Tulk replied, resenting the patrician attitude of Hutter, who thought of himself as the father of his people, and acted accordingly. That's if you believed in the sort of father who raped and chilled his daughters at will, and delighted in setting man against man to divide and conquer any opposition against him in the ville. Tulk knew how much Hutter was anticipating the arrival of Ayesha, and had almost walked in on the baron masturbating while he repeated her name like a mantra.

  Hutter looked patrician. A large man, standing over six feet with long gray hair and matching beard, and nursing a huge gut from over indulgence, he sat uneasily on the narrow wag seat, in direct contrast to Tulk, who was a few inches shorter and lean, with a sharply defined musculature that stood out well under his olive skin. His dark, saturnine brow remained fixed on the road ahead, not wishing to give anything away until the time he could gain his own personal vengeance.

  Hutter wouldn't accept Tulk's answer. "Say, you ain't actually afeared about what we're gonna do, are you?" he asked with a sly sarcasm infusing his voice.

  "Why would I be, Baron?" Tulk answered with as little expression in his voice as he could manage.

  Hutter shrugged. "I dunno. Mebbe it's just that you don't have the balls for this sort of thing. Mebbe I should think about demoting you—but then again, if you ain't worth where you are now, then why would you be worth anything in the sec force?"

  Tulk sighed inwardly, but kept a stone face. This was one of Hutter's irritating habits, part of his divide-and-rule philosophy with his sec force. If he set one against another, and kept petty rivalries and jealousies afloat, as well as threatening the position of his sec hierarchy, keeping them at one another's throats, it was easier for him to keep control over them all, as none would ever form alliances to end his reign.

  Except, of course, if they chose to align themselves with an outside force. Emboldened by this knowledge, Tulk did something that he had previously always been mindful of—he spoke back.

  "Mebbe I'm not worth anything, Baron, but just mebbe no one else is, either, because we've never had the chance to be a proper sec force."

  Hutter was silent for a moment. Confusion crowded his brow. The one thing that had never occurred to him was that one of his sec crew may actually talk back to him. Confusion gave way to anger, and his hands tightened around the Uzi he cradled in his lap. From the corner of his eye, Tulk saw that, and allowed the ghost of a triumphant smile to flicker across his face.

  "I wouldn't think about that, Baron," he said mildly. "You chill me now, and who's going to drive the wag? You certainly can't, and besides, by the time you clean the wag out and throw my body out, plus get it back on the track after my chilling body has thrown it off course, you'll be late. And then you'd lose face. And we can't have that, can we?"

  "No, we can't," Hutter replied in a low, flat tone that was so quiet it was almost lost under the roar of the wag engine. His eyes bored into Tulk, and there was nothing in them except the cold flint of hatred and finality. Elias Tulk wouldn't be going back to Summerfield.

  Tulk ignored the baron, and tried to keep the smile from his face, although inside he felt more elation and freedom than he had for, well, for probably all his life, but certainly for the past few years. He, too, knew that he wouldn't be going back to Summerfield—at least, not with Baron Tad Hutter. But the men had entirely different reasons for thinking this.

  Tulk drove on, with Hutter beside him, sunk into a brooding and heavy silence. Toward the rear of the wag sat two other sec men, who had listened in bewilderment to the exchange that had just taken place. Neither would ever risk what they called their lives by talking to Hutter in such a manner, knowing that there were always other sec men willing to avenge petty rivalries by doing the baron's bidding and assisting them to buy the farm. So the fact that Tulk had just committed suicide—as good as—in front of them made them both feel uneasy about the mission ahead.

  They weren't the only ones to be feeling ill at ease.

  AYESHA SHIFTED uncomfortably on her seat. It wasn't the wooden bench, hard and unwelcoming as the wag bumped over the rutted road surface, that made her squirm uneasily. Rather, it was the closed flick knife that she had concealed about her person before the women had been gathered and put into the wag, where they now sat huddled and crammed together, ten on each side of the armored wag, with three sec men on hand—one to drive, one to ride shotgun and one to man the machine blasters that were mounted through slots in the side of the armored wag. It was stiflingly hot, as the wag offered no protection from the beating sun, the heat gathering and collecting on the bare metal of the roof and sides, turning the interior into an oven. The women sat in mostly sullen silence, with only the odd complaint, slapped down hard by the sec men, sometimes with a word, sometimes with the back of the hand. It was also dark in the enclosed wag, and in the poor light Ayesha could study the downturned and trammeled faces of the women, and the anxiety on the face of the sec man who sat with them in the rear of the vehicle. Because of the gloom she could do this without being observed too closely.

  Baron Al had trusted none of the women, or their men. Many of them had husbands and lovers who had been unwilling to let the women go. They had been "persuaded" by force or threats to let their women go, but as the women themselves were also unwilling—incredibly so, in the eyes of Baron Al-—it was more than possible that, starving as they were, the men and women involved would hatch some kind of plan for escape, or at least an attempt at it. So he ordered that each of the women be strip searched before she got on board the wag.

  In the middle of the old sports arena where the wags had been prepared, the women were gathered and then stripped naked, their ragged clothes examined for any weapons they may conceal. The sec men conducted the cavity searches, Baron Al joining in this part of the search, which he saw as a bit of extra fun for him and his men.

  Except when it came to Ayesha. She was stripped like the others, but because she was Baron Al's daughter, and the prize of the merchandise because of her virginity, none of the sec men assembled were willing to conduct the cavity searches, particularly in front of Baron Al himself. One wrong word, one wrong move—the slightest touch of blood proving that she had been despoiled, and thus taking the prize cachet away, and the sec men knew that Baron Al was likely to come down hard on them. So when it was her turn to be searched bodily, Baron Al stepped forward himself.

  Knowing that Hutter would test her immediately by screwing her as the exchange took place, Jourgensen
was aware that no blood coming from the sexual encounter would convince Hutter that she was no virgin, and the deal would be off. So Baron Al trod carefully.

  "You better not be trying to shit me, girl," he whispered as he approached her.

  "Why would I do that?" she answered, barely able to keep the contempt from her voice.

  "You know," he said simply. "I'm just gonna have to trust that you've got nothing up your pussy—or that you never have," he added. "But I can still see."

  And before the girl had a chance to move, he bent her over and thrust his fingers up her anal passage, probing as his sec men had with the other women to see if there were any weapons concealed.

  Although she was empty in that orifice, Ayesha clenched the muscles in her pelvic floor and prayed that he wouldn't be able to feel the knife she had concealed in herself before leaving his palace. It was a slim, mother-of-pearl-handled knife with a rapier thin blade that she had honed until it drew blood from her fingertips with the slightest of pressure. It would be a formidable weapon in an enclosed space, where the sec men would be unwilling to use their blasters. The only thing she had to worry about was whether it would open involuntarily before she could remove it. With an air of resignation, it dawned on her that even if it did open, the internal hemorrhaging would probably cause her to buy the farm, so she wouldn't have much to worry about in that event.

  Baron Al had withdrawn his fingers. "I dunno whether or not to be disappointed in you," he said softly. "You ain't causing trouble, but I'd expect it from any daughter of mine."

  "Glad I let you down, then," she said with a sneer, not betraying her triumph at deceiving him. She'd keep that pleasure to herself.

  And now she was aboard the wag as it rolled across the rutted, churned-up desert, shifting ever more uncomfortably on the bench seat, and hoping that the motion of the wag wouldn't cause the knife to open. She had to get it out soon, but quite how was another matter.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" the sec man on the machine blaster snapped with irritation, watching her move.

  "I need to piss," she snapped back.

  "Shit, you pick your fucking moments, don't you?" the sec man replied with exasperation. "We're not going to stop the wag and let you out behind a rock, no matter who you are," he continued with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "You'll have to do it as best you can in the corner." He pointed to a slops bucket in the corner of the wag, near the bolted rear doors. He felt safe offering her this, as the wag was in the middle of the convoy, and even if she felt inclined to try to risk her luck diving out of the rear door, there would be a wag on their tail that would pick her up—if it didn't chill her first by running her over. Ayesha stood unsteadily, her legs numb from the journey, and her balance unsure as the wag swung across the rutted desert. As she steadied herself, she took the opportunity to look around at the other women in the wag. Most of them looked as though they were already beaten and defeated before any fight had even begun. One she recognized, and this woman was typical of them all. A tall, broad woman with a large bust and wide hips, her sharp-nosed face and prominent teeth were framed by a shock of blond hair that fell in a mane over her shoulders and down her back. Despite the lack of food that had plagued Charity, she had still kept a lot of meat on her bones, and the same basic shape that she had always had. And yet, if you looked closely, you could see the folds of loose skin beginning around her neck and shoulders, and the sag of her bosom where the flesh was falling off, leaving baggy, empty skin behind. She was looking down—had been for most of the journey—and only looked up on hearing Ayesha move.

  The girl recognized this woman as Anita, who had worked at the palace as a cook and had also whored for Baron Al when he had felt the urge in the still of the night. She had thought that lending her favors to the baron may save her from being sacrificed, but she had already born two children to different fathers, proving that her fertility was down to herself rather than any one man, and the baron had picked her as one of the first to board the wag. She was only in her middle thirties, with plenty of time to bear more children for the desperate men of Summerfield.

  Ayesha despised the woman, as she had been sly and bitchy to the girl when the baron had been absent, yet sweet and nice to her when he was around. Yet it gave her little pleasure to see the woman so defeated. As she gazed up, her eyes meeting Ayesha's, the girl could see that Anita had been crying the whole time since they had left the ville, her eyes little more than bloodshot orbs rimmed with sore, puffy flesh. Her cheeks were streaked with grime that had run under the onslaught of the tears, and her whole bearing was of one who had already accepted her fate…whatever that may be.

  The resignation and defeat of this woman she loathed made Ayesha even more determined to meet her side of the bargain with the Hellbenders—with Danny—or to be chilled in the attempt. Anything would be better than to end up like this pathetic specimen.

  Casting a swift yet penetrating survey over the rest of the women in the wag, she could see that the vast majority of them fell into the same category as Anita. There were only a couple of exceptions, one of them being a tall and lithe girl who was of mixed white and black parentage. She had a firm figure, lightly muscled and highly toned, with large brown eyes that met Ayesha's with an unflinching gaze. As their eyes met, it was as though some kind of understanding was reached between them without the need for words. Both recognized the will to survive, and seemed to agree without even acknowledging it that they would back each other up if the need arose. The girl had long plaits that were tied back into a pony tail at the back of her head, accentuating her perfect cheekbones. She had a pride and hauteur in her bearing that told Ayesha that she wouldn't be found wanting. The ponytail moved slightly behind the girl's head as she nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Ayesha moved to the back of the wag and turned to face the sec man, who was watching her intently.

  "So what d'you think I'm going to do, try and overpower you with a jet of piss?" she said, sneering at him. "Or is that how you get your kicks? Watching young girls?"

  The sec man tightened in his seat, his body rigid with rage at her taunts. "You better watch your mouth, bitch," he growled, "or I'll forget who you are."

  "And why you can't touch me?" she finished. The sec man was about to say something when the sec riding shotgun turned and addressed him. "For fuck's sake, let her do it in peace," he said wearily. "Anything to stop that damn whining. She'll get what she deserves soon enough."

  "Mebbe you're right. I'll hold that thought for a while." the sec man replied with a cold smile that spread humorlessly across his lips. "Why not? Let the bitch piss in peace."

  With which he turned away, facing the front of the wag, although his grip tightened instinctively on the Uzi.

  Instinct—that would be her enemy. She had to hope that the sec man didn't have an inkling of what she was about to do, or else the whole thing was blown before she had even begun.

  Ayesha unbuttoned her jeans and let them fall from her hips. She had forsworn underwear for ease at this moment, and thanked whatever had made her choose this as she reached into herself and fumbled for the end of the knife stock. Looking up desperately, she could see that some of the women were watching her with puzzlement, while others were still looking away and were downcast. The beautiful dark girl was looking directly at her, but as she was in the eyeline of the sec man, she kept her face stony so that he wouldn't be alerted. Mostly, it seemed that the women, if they cared at all, were puzzled in a lackadaisical way as to why she seemed to be playing with herself rather than pissing. She was aware that the sec man would become suspicious if he didn't hear her, so when she had extracted the knife she tried to force something out to sound in the bucket, but nothing other than a brief trickle could be forced from her unwilling bladder.

  The knife sat in her palm as she rapidly hitched up her jeans and secured them. She took two strides forward, palming the knife so that the blade shot out away from her body as she triggered the
mechanism with a soft clicking sound.

  It was little, but enough to attract the attention of the sec man, who recognized the sound of old, and swung around in his seat to face her, bringing up the Uzi.

  Ayesha knew she would have to move fast, and ironically it was Anita's stupidity that saved her.

  "Ayesha, what are you doing with that?" she asked in a voice that was pathetic and stupid, hiccuped still with her sobbing.

  The words were enough to distract the attention of the sec man—distract him enough for his head to turn toward the sound of Anita's voice and give Ayesha the vital fraction of a second to slice across his exposed throat with the knife. Her arm was well muscled, and she put enough power and momentum behind the stroke to slice across the exposed flesh cleanly and deeply. His windpipe and carotid artery were opened, and the blood pumped from him in gouts as he opened his mouth to speak, only a choking husk emerging through the damaged flesh as the light faded in his eyes.

  The dark girl was swift, her reactions sure. As he choked, she shot out of her seat and grabbed the Uzi, wrestling it from his grasp and turning to cover the sec man riding shotgun, who had turned at the sound of activity in the rear of the wag. She clicked off the safety and held the blaster firmly and in a manner that suggested she knew exactly how to handle it.

  "Don't even think about it unless you want to be spread over the windshield," she said quietly but firmly, adding over her shoulder, "I think we're in charge now—right, babe?"

  Chapter Fifteen

  The journey was proving long and arduous. It was approaching the middle of the day, and the sun bore down on the Hellbenders' convoy with a relentless force. Inside the wags, the heat built up to a humid, stifling pitch. For those who were using the old preDark military wags that had been left in the redoubt, it was slightly more bearable, the insulation inside the wags cutting down some of the heat that was stored in the metal. But although these wags also had air conditioning, the drivers had been instructed by Correll not to use it, as it would eat up more fuel, and the gaunt man wanted to make sure they had enough to get them to the rendezvous point and also to carry out any maneuvers they may need to make without the wags running dry and spoiling the military action.