The interior of the valley was smooth on this fine morning, the earth now dry and baked as the sun drew the moisture from it that had fallen during the chem storm. There was little sign of the churning mud pools and ridges that had been whipped up in the desert around the outcrop. The shape and position of the rocks had acted as a shield against the stronger winds, losing another layer of shale and rock on the outside as the chem-laden rain had lashed against it, but reducing the turmoil within to a minimum. Dean had been right in his assumption that the enclosed valley would throw up clouds of dust. The baking earth was nowhere near cracking, but already the layer of top-soil was so powdery and dry that any disturbance was likely to shake it loose and raise clouds of dust. But it was a fairly smooth and unpitted surface that would allow for a maximum of driving maneuverability.
As the only area for miles around with some kind of shade or moisture retained in the shadowy areas of the rocks, it harbored not only the small amounts of hardy plant life that could be seen in the surrounding area, but also acted as home to a small colony of insects, reptiles and mammals that were descended from meerkats and gophers, mutated into a scrawny yet defiant species that could scavenge and survive on very little, driven by instinct to defeat the odds and carry on.
But not today. As if some instinct for danger had told them as much, the scant wildlife that lived off the outcrop had dived for cover, retreating into their burrows and seeking security within the recesses of the rocks.
It was always quiet in and around the area, but this morning, as the sun hit the middle of the sky and the middle of the day, it became quieter still. There was a stillness and silence around the rocks that spoke of chilling and imminent death.
The silence was broken by a distant buzz, which grew in volume, deepened in tone, until it became a rumble. If any of the creatures that were now safely in hiding had cared to look, it would have seen a moving cloud of dust coming toward the rocks, with the outlines of a group of wags just about visible within the flying layers of dust and soil.
The Hellbenders were nearing their goal. In the leading wag, Ryan and Krysty could see the distant speck on the horizon begin to grow and take shape as they got closer. Within a few minutes, they could see that the tall, thin outcrop formed a valley, with a narrow channel both in and out of the enclosed space.
"That's it?" Ryan questioned, although all he really needed was confirmation.
"That's it," Correll affirmed. He was driving the wag one-handed, his sinewy wrist strong enough to control the wag's steering over the rough ground, his knuckles white around the wheel. His other hand was caressing the box that was still cradled on his lap.
"You want to tell us what that's all about?" Krysty asked in a gentle voice. She had noticed that Correll had been staring down at the box more and more as they approached the rendezvous point, muttering under his breath in an intense manner, even though it was too quiet for her to work out exactly what he was saying. All she knew was that every time she looked at him, her sentient mane began to curl around her neck in a manner that even the thought of the impending firefight couldn't affect. She had the notion that Correll was being driven by an inner fire and flame that he would need to vent in order for them to understand why this firefight was taking place, and in order to make him more coherent during the battle ahead. Because of Doc, she had seen what madness could do, and the thought of that from someone directing a firefight wasn't something she wished to consider. The followed him loyally and to the letter. If he was to stay on the track of sanity, then it was best to probe this matter now.
"You know the basic story," Correll replied, his eyes darting from the track ahead to the box on his lap.
"Yeah, mebbe, but there's more to it than what you've told us so far, right?" she continued gently.
"Mebbe." Correll was silent for a second, but Krysty didn't respond. She wanted to let him tell the story in his own time. The Hellbenders in the wag stayed silent, not knowing quite how to react. Ryan, for his part, kept his own counsel. He figured that Krysty knew what she was doing, and that she would draw the secret of the box from Correll when the gaunt man was ready. He didn't have to wait long, for in the empty silence, Correll chose to begin his story.
"Thing is, friends, I told you something of what happened, but not all of it. Because there are some things that are hard to speak of, even when you want to explain. Some things that seem to stick in your throat, and no matter how hard you try to force them out, they just won't come. And they gather within you, festering like a poison in an infected wound, until there comes a time when you just cannot keep it in any longer. You have to force it out, break the skin and bleed the wound so that the pure blood can start to run free once more, and the healthiness can return to the wound. And that's what I'm trying to do now. That's what this is—for all of us except you and your friends—to our different levels. We all have those wounds. I figure that mine are worse than anyone else's, but then that's because they're mine. Any one of us on this convoy could say the same thing.
"But if you knew why, if you understood the depths of degradation and despair, the very bottom of the pit that I feel that I've been staring up from for so long, this is my chance to clean the slate, to climb up the sides of that pit and get out where the air is fresh and sweet again. And if I buy the farm in the attempt? Well, what have I done but buy a way out of this misery and my own hell? Oblivion cannot be any more painful than what has been before."
He stopped, almost as though exhausted by the outburst, and Ryan cast his eye over Krysty. Her hair clung to her neck and shoulders in long tendrils, and his suspicion was confirmed. The man was raving, and on the verge of losing all control. If he did, then where would they stand when the firefight began?
The one-eyed man had rarely felt less in control of a situation than he did at this minute. His people were spread out over three wags in a convoy bound for a full-scale firefight with two other convoys, and at the helm was a madman. There had to be some way of pulling this together, if only he could communicate with J.B., Mildred and Doc, with Jak and Dean…and Danny, whose warnings were proving only too prophetic.
Before he had a chance to formulate any kind of plan, Correll had begun once more.
"See, I was head of sec in Charity, and I was real diligent. I did my job properly, not from any great sense of loyalty or duty, but just because that's the way I'm made— I couldn't do it any other way, it just wouldn't feel right. And I was real careful. My people were good, because I made damn sure they were. I wouldn't have any screwing around that could reflect badly on me, or put anyone in danger of Jourgensen's wrath,' cause he was a mean bastard, and I just wanted to keep him happy and do the job. If any of my people got in the shit, he'd have their tits or balls in a vise. He was an evil asshole, and still is. But I didn't know just how fucking evil until he thought I'd done him wrong.
"See, there was a breach of sec when we were overseeing a trading convoy that passed through. The trader tried to rip off Jourgensen by selling him some shit rat poison instead of jolt, and it's only because Jourgensen's personal drug taster took some and died puking out his own intestines that we knew it was shit. Hell, looking back, I wish it had been Jourgensen himself who tried it, greedy asshole that he is. But no, he couldn't even oblige us on that.
"I had the trader chased, but he slipped past the sec patrol pursuing him. Jourgensen was in a shit bad mood because he'd lost jack and face, and couldn't even get high to make up for it. So he had the patrol chilled and called me before him.
"I'd never fucked up before—I'd have long since been chilled if that was the case, but even this time I knew that I hadn't fucked up. Jourgensen left it nearly a day before trying the merchandise. If the shithead had any sense at all, he would have had his taster try it before handing over the jack. So it was too late for my men to pick up the trail and catch the prick who did it. Not their fault, not mine.
"But after they'd been chilled, I was told what a useless piece of shit I was,
and how I was probably behind the plot to kill him. The crazy paranoid bastard had turned the whole thing into a conspiracy against him. And I was the one whose ass he wanted. Only he wasn't just going to chill me. Oh no, he was going to make me suffer first.
"I was beaten senseless—but well, I've got to give them that. It was my own men who did it, but I can't blame them. They were acting under orders, and you don't go against Baron Al. They beat me until I was in so much pain that I couldn't even think. Everything seemed to come to me from a long way away, as though in some kind of bad dream. But I wasn't allowed to lose consciousness, not at any point. They knew exactly the nerve points to jolt me back if I started to fall.
"I knew I was bound to be chilled, but I didn't give a fuck by then. Let it happen, release me from the pain. But he went too far—just that touch of fuckwit sadism that's sealed his fate. See, he wasn't content with it just being me. He had to bring Becky into it."
"Who was Becky?" Krysty asked as Correll lapsed once more into silence.
"She was my woman. Mebbe the only thing—person— I ever really cared about. I never liked people that much. That's why I was so good at my job—I could do it without getting involved, without caring. But Becky was different. She was the only thing I would have died for. Only that bastard Jourgensen didn't give me the chance.
"While I was lying there, sec men over me, too fucked up with pain to move, he had her brought in. They stripped her, and then he fucked her in front of me. And he had the others do it, too. That was bad enough for her, she was crying like I'd never heard, looking at me like she didn't know whether to feel bad for herself or for me, despite how much she was hurting. That chilled part of me more than any physical pain could.
"And then he got out the branding irons. He used them on the horses we have, to mark them as his own. Just a J mark beaten out of metal. He fired them up, and he did it himself. He branded each tit, then both cheeks on her ass. He made a line of them on her belly, and each time she screamed with the pain, and passed out, they'd bring her around with cold water and he'd start again. They spread her legs, and he branded her between the legs, burning the flesh and hair so that— Oh God, I can still smell it."
Correll was silent again for a few seconds. Ryan and Krysty left him alone, waiting for him to be ready to begin again as he stroked the box on his lap.
"And then it got to the point where she was near death, and he still wanted more. I swear the sick fuck had forgotten I was there by then, and he just wanted to please himself.
"They took her out into the yard at the back of his palace, and there was a stake hammered into the ground. Kindling had been piled around it, and they tied her to the stake, bundling the kindling around her feet and legs. Two of them held me up while I was made to watch. Becky was in no kind of state to fight against them—anyway, she was just one woman and there were so many of them. They tied her against the stake, then Jourgensen went up to her and fired up the kindling. That was when she started to scream. Yeah, she'd made noises before, but all the fight had been knocked out of her. But this was different. She was wide awake, totally conscious now, and knew she was going to buy the farm. And do it in a way that— Fuck it, I can't think of a worse way to go. The flames licked up her legs, and I swear I could see the flesh blistering as the heat got under her skin. The smell was horrible—sweet and strong, like roasting fat. I could see the flames traveling up her naked body, touching her and making her burn. I swear to anything that you can call a god that I could see her intestines roasting and burning away, I could see her bones start to show as the flesh and fat burned off them.
"I don't think she died until her guts spilled out and burned away. It must…"
He stopped, and paused for a few moments before continuing.
"Anyway, that asshole Al decided to save me for the next day. And that was his mistake. They left me alone, figuring that I couldn't move far enough and fast enough to be a danger. Wrong. I had enough willpower to get the hell out. I was head of sec, y'see. I knew where the wags were, how to hotwire one, when the sec patrols were due and who was on them. But first I had to do something. I went back to the fire and gathered together what was left of Becky. I took her with me and got the hell out. I didn't know where I was going, and I thought I was on my way to buy the farm…but on my own terms.
"But it didn't work out that way, did it? Fate will always decide. And it decided for me. It took me up that mountain to meet the end, but instead I found that old tech base. It was fate that then brought the others to me."
He looked down at the box.
"And it's fate that has finally brought us here, my love. Fate that has decreed we have a chance to be revenged. And if I buy the farm and join you, then so be it."
Chapter Seventeen
As the wags approached the outcrop, Correll picked up the radio transmitter in front of him and patched in to the other wags in the convoy, ordering them into the positions they had seen sketched on the map back at the redoubt. His voice was firm and clear, with no indication of the emotional catharsis he had been through just a few minutes before. Ryan and Krysty sat in the wag and observed in silence. There was no way they could communicate their concerns to each other, let alone to their comrades in the other wags. All they could do was sit tight and wait for that opening to occur.
"No sign of the trade convoys yet," Correll commented as he drove the leading wag through the gap in the outcrop and into what would soon be the arena for the final battle.
"Making good time, then," Ryan replied, keeping his voice level. Yet there was something about it that made Cy turn sharply, even if Correll didn't notice.
"What else?" the sec man asked.
Ryan shrugged. "Nothing. The desert was pretty bad in places, so much mud, dust and quicksand. Could have delayed us."
"Could have delayed them, too," Cy answered. He seemed to be reassured in some way, but there was a faint querulousness to his tone that suggested he still felt something wasn't quite right. He just couldn't define what that may be.
"If they've actually set off," Krysty pointed out. "We have no way of knowing this for sure."
"They will have," Correll said with a cast-iron certainty in his tone. "They've got no choice. It's this or a long, hard chill for both of them."
He drove his wag to the center of the dust bowl that was in front of the outcrop, then veered to the left, taking the wide load through a gap that was so narrow it almost scraped the paint from the side of the wag. As he took this path, the second wag, driven by J.B., went a little farther on and then took a right fork, finding its shelter behind another gap in the rock wall. Two wags followed each lead, and then the wags positioned themselves near the gaps, hidden from view but with an easy access to each end of the outcrop.
"That's their big mistake, Jourgensen and Hutter," Correll remarked to Ryan, although it seemed almost as though he were talking to himself. "They haven't done their research properly. They'll have their sec look out for something at each end, but they don't know about these channels. They won't know that we're hidden, waiting to circle around and take them out."
And it was true. Ryan looked out of the side window on the wag door. The gap in the outcrop was barely wide enough to pilot a wag through, but if taken with care it could be achieved. They were approximately halfway along the length of the arena, with the rock channel twisting in front of them and leading out at an oblique angle to the main track the trade wags would be taking. From the approach, that exit was well hidden, and it would be easy for the Hellbenders' wags to slip out and circle around to close off the entrances. In the heat of a firefight, these would be the only other avenues of escape, and Correll had plans to seal them off.
He picked up the handset and called J.B.
"You got the packages?"
"Yeah," J.B. replied simply.
Correll nodded to himself, satisfied with what was about to take place. "Okay, you and Jenny get them delivered. You got the remotes?"
"Ye
ah, and tested," J.B. answered. "The signals are fine, just got to prime 'em."
"Okay." Correll paused for a second, and Krysty felt a cold shiver run through her as she caught the gleam in his eyes. It was the culmination of his plans, and he was relishing every moment. "Let's do it," he said simply.
At this signal, the assembled Hellbenders sprang into action. J.B. and Jenny left their wag to plant plas-ex charges at the mouth of the rock channels, which they would detonate with remote detonators. J.B. jogged back to the entrance to the channel and began to climb the rocks, searching for handholds and testing them before supporting his weight and hauling himself up to a point where the rock had a deep crevice. He took the charge from a bag slung over his shoulder and punched in the code that would make it respond to the detonator he had in his pocket. The lights on the digital display of the small detonating device flashed the code back at him, then settled into one small, red, blinking light that affirmed the readiness of the device. This achieved, he secured its place in the crevice and scrambled back down.
While he did this, Jenny had sprinted across the length of the arena toward the opposite channel opening, and had started to climb, searching for hand- and footholds as she went. With a speed that wasn't surprising given her lithe build, she scaled the wall of the channel, finding a ledge on which to place her charge. It wasn't a crevice in the manner of the hiding place J.B. had found, so she had to secure the plas-ex in place with adhesive tape, hoping that this and the natural texture of the plas-ex would be enough to keep it in place until the charge was detonated. In truth, it was likely that even if the charge became dislodged and fell to the foot of the opening, it would still rip out enough rock to cause a fall and block the channel. She punched in the sec code as J.B. had done, checked that the single red light was flashing and then quickly descended, sprinting across the arena to return to her wag.
Axler, James - Deathlands 65 - Hellbenders Page 21