The Drones may have been taken aback by Catfish’s salty comeback, but Angel’s grin never wavered. Ahmer opened the hatch, and Angel came out and greeted everyone in the party with the half-handshake, half-hug combo he’d picked up as a kid on the streets of East L.A.
“I knew you were coming, Sands. I saw it like a vision in my dreams. I watched you in the Arena, Bro, and I said to myself, one of these days Sands is gonna bust outta this shithole, and I’m gonna bust with him. It’s destiny, man, I’m telling you. I didn’t know you was here, Catfish, but I’m glad to see you. How you doing?”
Angel talked a mile a minute, as if he wanted to catch up on the last three years right on the spot. Sands shut him up momentarily by unstrapping one of Lani’s bullpups and handing it to him.
“You still know how to use one of these?”
Angel caressed the weapon like a pet cat. “Like a fish knows how to swim, Bro.”
“We’ve got another man to pick up.”
“Who’s that, Sands?”
“Wolf.”
“That’s cool. Any others?”
“Don’t know yet. We’re still looking. Ahmer, you got him pinpointed?”
“Yes, but we have to take the elevator again. He’s not on this level.”
“Okay.” With a whistle, Sands directed his troupe back from where they had come. They double-timed it past the gantlet of cat-calling prisoners, but they had no trouble as they crossed the mezzanine and made it back to the elevator.
After all were boarded, Sands asked, “Which deck?”
Ahmer swallowed before he answered. “Seven.”
“Are you sure?”
Ahmer nodded.
“That’s the Psycho Ward.” Angel crossed himself.
“So what?” Sands said. “They’re all locked up in cages, just like everybody else.”
“Yeah,” Bao put in, “but they’re batshit crazy.”
“Maybe not all,” Desmond offered. “The Psycho Ward doesn’t take up the whole deck.”
“They call it Violence Deck for a reason, Desmond.” Bao stabbed the air with an imaginary dagger. “They’re all violent psychotics!”
Catfish tugged at Sands’ sleeve. “You sure about this, Sands? If Wolf’s in the Psycho Ward…” He tapped his temple. “He’s probably gone.”
“Well, then, we need to find out, don’t we?” Sands punched the button and the elevator jolted into motion.
-12-
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become one.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Once the elevator grumbled to a stop and the doors split, the legend 7 VIOLENCE 7 stared back at Sands and his party like a threat. Unlike Deck Eight, here there were no reverberations of the rumor mill, no catcalls from inmates, and the backup lights that ran on emergency power were even fewer and dimmer. There wasn’t quite silence—movement could be heard in the darkened cells, and voices muttered and hissed in streams of incoherent syllables. As Sands stepped out onto the deck a single, piercing wail echoed from someplace in the far shadows. It froze the party in their tracks.
“I think that was Psych talk for ‘welcome aboard,’” Catfish quipped.
Sands took a reluctant Ahmer by the elbow and pulled him forward. “Which way?”
Ahmer pointed down a corridor illuminated by flickering lights. Seeing the fear on the faces of the four young Drones, Sands led the way. “Say when.”
The cells lining either side of the corridor were mostly dark, but the living shapes within them were evident. Many were prostrate and still in their bunks, one even lying on the deck as if unconscious or dead. Some stood and brooded from the shadows, some gripped the grates with claw-like hands, and still others paced back and forth like caged panthers. A few called out as the party passed, bleating like animals, whistling, or shouting. One, in a clear, articulate voice calmly stated, “I want to eat your face.”
Most of the inmates looked human enough, but their faces were animalistic, some staring with predatory intensity, others rolling their eyes insanely.
“Eyes front!” Sands barked, sensing the waning resolve of his crew.
They came to an intersection, and Sands paused. “Which way?”
“Straight ahead,” Ahmer replied.
The corridors right and left were brightly lit. Straight ahead was a long tunnel of darkness with an ominous glow at the end.
“Figures.” Sands trudged on.
The cells along this corridor seemed to be empty, and in the silence, the only sound was the clatter of their footsteps on the deck. The light at the end of the corridor defined itself as a rectangle, and as they got closer, the outline of a cell. Sands could make out the monitor hanging from the ceiling, the toilet and sink, and the bunk along the back wall. Lying on the bunk was the shape of a man. Wolf.
“That’s it,” Ahmer whispered.
As they neared, Wolf didn’t move. He lay on his back, eyes, closed, his hands folded across his chest, almost like a corpse laid out for burial.
Self-conscious of the sound of their footfalls in the silence, the group walked softly, but the metal deck resounded with an unmistakable clatter. Wolf must have heard them approach, but he didn’t stir. Sands stopped and raised a fist. The Drones came to a halt, a safe three or four paces back. Catfish and Angel joined Sands, and—to Sands’ surprise—Ahmer stepped forward with them.
They looked down at the man in the cell, perfectly still, except for the rise and fall of his chest. He looked much like the Wolf of old—paler, but lean and muscled, with a thick brush of prematurely silver hair that he had somehow managed to keep close-cropped, if ragged. Angel looked at Catfish. Catfish looked at Sands. Sands shrugged. Why didn’t he move? Maybe Catfish had been right, that Wolf was “gone.”
But then Wolf opened his eyes, slowly turned his head, and stared at the men staring back at him. He smiled.
Ahmer lifted his hand-held in a silent gesture to ask if he should spring the latch, but Sands stayed him.
“Wolf, we’re all glad to see you looking so cheerful, but you’re in the Psycho Ward, man. You’re going to have to say something if you want us to let you out.”
Wolf swung his feet to the deck and sat up with a sigh. “Aw, you know I was never the chatty type.”
With no more than that, Sands told Ahmer to open the hatch. Wolf stepped through, and Sands put a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you okay, Wolf? I mean, really okay?”
“They put something in the food. It does something to you.” He indicated the row of empty cells. “I’ve seen it. All these men…I’m okay now, but if they’d kept me here much longer…” He shook his head. Sands embraced him, slapped him hard on the back. Angel and Catfish took their turns doing the same.
Without being told or asking permission, Wolf relieved Desmond of one his two rifles, slammed a magazine home, and stuffed two more in his belt.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Catfish said.
“Not all,” Sands replied. “Not G.K.”
***
Feeling woozy from watching too long as Hari scrolled through hundreds of mugshots and profiles, Victoria plopped down at one of the unmanned consoles. She rubbed her eyes, which still felt raw and crusty, as if the backs of her eyelids were sandpaper. She asked Rashid if he had any eye drops in his kit. He brought it over and fished around, but stopped when movement on the surveillance video caught his attention. Victoria saw it, too.
“What is it?” Oleg had noticed them staring at the screens.
“Trouble.”
On the video feed they could see inmates in one of the blocks pouring out of their cells. Oleg spat a Slavic curse and tapped his headset.
“Ahmer! Ahmer, do you read me?”
Ahmer’s voice came over the speaker. “Here.”
“There’s been a breach. Prisoners out of their cells. What deck are you on?”
“Seven.”
Oleg checked the monitor—it indicate
d Deck Seven.
“Shit! You’ve gotta get out of there.”
Ahmer tapped into the video feed on his hand-held to bring up the images Oleg was seeing. As he gaped at the sight on his screen of perhaps a dozen inmates out of their cells, he bumped into Sands, who had come to an abrupt stop.
“Sands!”
Sands held up a hand. “I see them.”
They were straight ahead, milling about, but giving no sign that they had noticed Sands or his party.
Ahmer hissed in Sands’ ear. “We can go back and circle around to the elevator the other way.”
Sands nodded and signaled a retreat. They all turned quietly, and after a half dozen careful strides it seemed they would escape without incident. But a whoop went up from one of the darkened cells they passed, and the Psychs came running.
“Go! Go! Go!” Wolf led from the rear, pumping his finger forward. No one hesitated, the whole party running full out, back from where they had come.
“Which way?” They were approaching the point where the dark and light corridors crossed. Sands saw that Ahmer was struggling to hold his joggling hand-held steady as he ran as fast as he could.
“Left!” It sounded like a guess.
They veered left, Wolf lagging behind just long enough to squeeze off a burst from his bullpup to discourage their pursuers. Sands caught a glimpse of Wolf pausing to see if the burst had had an effect, saw his look of disbelief as he goosed the bullpup again and ran for his life.
The steady light of the corridor washed over them like a calming bath, and Sands sensed the panic that had propelled them from the dark ebbing away. But unlike the other corridor, this one was fully populated by Psychs, and the sight of the party running in fear agitated them to a frenzy of shouts, growls, and unnerving laughter.
“Keep running,” Sands shouted. “Don’t slow down!” But Sands almost stopped dead when he heard a warning buzzer, and the row of LED indicators on the cells ahead suddenly flashed from green to red.
“Oh, no.” The words formed in his head like a thought balloon in a comic book. Most of the Psychs hadn’t realized what had happened yet, but one tested his hatch, and it fell open with a clank.
“Run!” Sands’ legs were already burning, but he took off as if he meant to leave the others behind. He met the first Psychs out of their cages like a fullback at the scrimmage line, and they went down. He meant to clear a path, but in seconds the Psychs were streaming out of their cells, forming a gantlet of screaming, flailing bodies.
“Keep going,” he shouted to the Drones. “We’ve got to make the elevator.”
Sands, Wolf, and Catfish took on the Psychs with a fury, beating them down with batons, cracking their heads with the butt-ends of their bullpups, only firing a shot when they had to. They managed to get the Drones to the end of the corridor, but there were just too many Psychs coming from all directions. One had grabbed Lani from behind, but she managed to crush his instep with a well-placed kick and gouge his eye. His howl proved that even the Psychs felt pain.
Bao and Desmond were double-teaming another Psych, beating him down to the deck with their batons. But Ahmer wasn’t so lucky. A Psych had hold of his bullpup and was trying to get leverage against Ahmer’s flailing arms to crush his windpipe.
“If they get weapons we’re in trouble,” Catfish shouted, cracking another Psych across the face with his bullpup.
Sands ordered Angel and Wolf ahead to secure the elevator. “We’ll catch up.”
Sands took out Ahmer’s assailant with a shot through the ear. The Psych crumpled, Ahmer’s wide eyes gaping at the spray of blood. Catfish raked the corridor with a burst from his bullpup, sending the other Psychs diving back into their cells. Ahmer had collapsed into a lotus position, his bullpup in his lap. Sands helped him to his feet.
“You’re okay, son.” It was an order.
Bao and Desmond were still pummeling their foe, although he had long since stopped fighting, or possibly breathing.
“Guys. Guys! I think you got him.”
Panting with effort, the two Drones stopped swinging their batons. They looked at Sands as if coming out of a dream.
Catfish sent another burst of machine gun fire raking across the bulkhead. “Let’s go!”
Sands stood at the end of the corridor, urging the others through. It wasn’t long before the Psychs were coming out of their cells, but once everyone in his team was safely through the hatch, Sands slammed it shut and jammed it with a baton.
They passed several dead bodies along the catwalk that led back to the mezzanine, where Angel and Wolf were waiting. Angel stood guard, nervously gripping his rifle as Wolf battered the elevator button with the side of his fist.
“It won’t open!”
Sands looked to Ahmer. Somehow, Ahmer had managed to hold on to his device, but his hands shook so that he was having trouble operating it.
Banging at the end of the catwalk. Somehow the Psychs had pried the hatch open, and several hands groped through the gap trying to get hold of the baton and unjam it. If these really were Psychs, Sands thought, they weren’t the mindless monsters everyone thought they were.
“Come on, Ahmer, you can do it.”
Ahmer fixed his eyes on the hand-held with furious concentration, but his hands trembled so that he couldn’t work the keypad. Bao looked at Sands, and quietly took the device from Ahmer. He worked the keys. The indicator beeped and flashed, but the elevator doors stayed shut.
“It’s no good. Somebody’s shut it down.”
At the end of the catwalk, the baton clattered to the deck and the hatch swung open. Psychs began shoving through, slowed only by the numbers trying to crowd each other out.
Sands looked at Catfish. “Hand me that launcher.”
He turned his back to Catfish, showing the grenade launcher he had secured by a strap. Catfish unfastened it and handed it over. Sands retrieved a grenade from his pack of ammunition, loaded, and aimed.
“Grab onto something.”
Seeing the weapon, some of the Psychs tried to scramble back through the hatch, but there were too many trying to push through from the other side. Sands let the grenade fly. A ball of fire shook the ship down to its frame and unhinged the catwalk from its moorings. Somehow, the Psychs had managed to get the hatch closed, protecting most of them from the blast, but a half dozen on the catwalk went flying to their deaths.
The mezzanine sagged beneath Sands’ feet. He slid down the sloping grate to the rail, but he managed to hang on. When he’d regained his footing, he turned to find his crew cowering and clinging to the mezzanine rails, all regarding him with looks of mixed amazement and relief.
Catfish said something, but Sands couldn’t hear it for the ringing in his ears. He slung the launcher over his shoulder and nodded to the next nearest exit. “Looks like we’re taking the stairs.”
After the adrenaline stopped pumping, the climb to Top Deck was a strain on rubbery legs. Angel and Wolf were the least affected, and Angel even showed off for a huffing and puffing Catfish by turning around and taking the steps backwards.
“What’s the matter, Cat? You getting old?”
Catfish smiled with good humor. “Too much high livin’.”
Sands noticed Ahmer lagging behind, a hangdog look on his face.
“You okay?”
Ahmer looked at Sands with pain in his eyes. “I’m a coward. Not brave. Not like you.”
Sands smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “No, Ahmer, you’re not like me. You’re still human.”
-13-
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
—Aesop
Sands burst into the Vestibule, followed by Catfish and the others. Oleg and Victoria were standing over Hari, who continued to scroll through the prisoner manifest. Sands’ eyes fixed on Oleg. He grabbed him and shoved him against the wall.
“How did those Dregs get loose?”
“I don’t know!”
“Somebody had to open those cages!” Sa
nds pressed his forearm against Oleg’s throat. “Talk!”
“It wasn’t me!” Oleg could barely get the words out. “I tried to warn you!”
Rashid extended a calming hand to Sands, but he knew better than to touch him in this state. “It’s true, Sands. Oleg is not your enemy.”
Sands glanced from Rashid to Victoria. He could see in both their faces they thought he was wrong. He relaxed his grip, but kept Oleg pinned.
“Convince me.”
Angel and Wolf loomed behind him, glaring at Oleg with menace. Catfish was there, too, but something else had caught his eye. He pointed to the basket of fruit at the snack bar. “Is that…food?”
“It sure is. Help yourself.”
The three men pounced on the bounty like starving hyenas. Sands couldn’t help but smile at their childlike joy, but he quickly switched back to his war face before Oleg got the wrong idea.
“So?”
Oleg pointed to his work station, where the monitors were filled with ship’s diagrams. “It’s the Psycho Ward.”
Sands let him go. “Show me.”
“I’ve been going over the ship’s circuits. It’s the only logical place, just like Ahmer said.”
Sands nodded Ahmer over, and they watched as Oleg pointed out what he had found.
“Very similar circuitry as the Vestibule. Common electrical here, but this—” he pointed out a tight pattern of cable “—more suitable for data, for computers.”
“Could be for medical devices,” Ahmer observed. “They basically are computers.”
“Yes, but look at this.” Oleg pointed to another area. “Servers, maybe?”
“Or massively parallel processors.”
“That’s what I think.” Oleg looked at Sands. “With that kind of computing power, you could run ten ships like Inferno, easy. What’s it for?”
It was a good question, but Sands felt like he was getting into some high computer geek weeds.
“Sands!” It was Victoria. “Look!”
The overhead screens had lit up with the latest video feed. Sands hadn’t heard it, because there was no sound, just images that jumped and pixilated, as if there was some massive atmospheric interference. In fiery block letters was the caption, “WORLD IN CHAOS.” It looked like a news report. No news personality was visible, but a subheading, in jarringly jaunty script, read, “Brought to you by Tastes Like Mom’s!”
Inferno 2033 Book Two: Perdition Page 7