by James Axler
He knelt with his ear pressed to the bottom of a heavy glass, which in turn was pressed to the thick wood of the door. Beside him knelt Baron Sand, similarly equipped. It had given Doc a quite thoroughly childish delight to discover she knew the same trick of amplifying speech through a solid barrier.
“I notice you showed a lot of skill and initiative in bringing your own fat ass back without any new holes in it, Trumbo,” the biker baron Diego said dryly.
Beneath the muted conversation, Doc heard the pops and ripple of blasterfire. And screams. Fortunately these were nowhere near as close as Doc and the baron had been forced to listen to for too long a time before.
The people of Joker Creek, it seemed, were not accepting their new overlords with the grace Diego seemed to expect. Or at least not with the alacrity.
“Believe me...Baron,” Trumbo said, with only the briefest of pauses before the honorific. “You’re lucky to get anything back at all. The bastards are heeled.”
“Yeah. Well. You can quit shivering before you lose control of your asshole and shit down your leg. I reckon I’ll need all the bullet magnets I can get here right directly. Anyway, if the bastards do make a play here, we’ll have the machine-gun wag to teach ’em the error of their ways.”
“Uh, about that, boss,” said a voice Doc failed to recognize. It was a man’s baritone, and not decidedly firm at the moment.
“Yes?”
“We, uh, we lost the 60-wag back at the ville. Got shot right to glowing nightshit, it did.”
“Did it now?”
Diego’s voice was silky. It had dropped so far in volume Doc could barely hear it. Its sibilance reminded Doc of a braided silken lash sliding nude pink and shiny over in...happier times.
Despite their deficit in years, by any clock or calendar one cared to specify, the dear baron had certainly expanded Theophilus Tanner’s repertory of experiences. Especially sensual ones.
“And who’s the highest-ranking member of the crew I sent out to make it back here still breathing?”
“Uh, that’d be me, Baron,” the same shaky baritone said.
Transmitted through the hollow glass, the blaster shot stung Doc’s ear and made him jump upright. It would have been loud even muffled by the door. As it was, his ear rang cruelly. Clearly, the Crazy Dog chieftain’s Desert Eagle was of some colossal caliber.
More deliberately, Sand straightened. She had set her glass on the floor by the door. Now she massaged her ringing ear.
“I think we’ve heard all we need to,” she said. “We need to prepare.”
“For what?”
“To depart.”
“What? You mean we have had the means to get out of here all along?”
“Of course,” she said with a smirk that under the circumstances he could only find fatuous. “I’m a con artist—a bunco steerer, as I believe you would say, in that charmingly anachronistic fashion of yours. You don’t think I made preparation for any manner of covert departure?”
“Then why have we not departed before this?” he demanded. “Or—to be more realistic, I suppose—why have you not departed?”
“I won’t leave you, dear heart. When I go, you go with me.”
“But why?”
“I won’t lie and tell you I’ve fallen in love with you. Well, more than just a little. But men of your quality are beyond rare in our decayed age. I value that.”
He furrowed his brow. He longed to believe her. After all, it would be so easy for her to try to play on my vanity, he thought. And, honesty compels to admit, more than likely succeed.
“Allow me return to my original question,” he said, aware he was probably blushing and wishing to skate past the fact. “Why not escape before, if you were able to? Why did you stand by and listen while your friends suffered at the hands of Diego and his Crazy Dogs?”
A look of pain so profound he could not help but take it as genuine racked her face.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I listened. And it tore me up inside. I won’t be so fatuous as to say I felt their pain, nor anything as poignant as they went through. But I felt my own pain.”
He remembered, then, that tears had streamed in rivers down her face, and she had pounded her fists on the wall until he expected her to leave bloody marks. He regretted having asked the second question.
“Escape to where?” she asked him. “More to the point, to what? Would it have helped my people if I joined them in their torments in the flesh, do you think?”
“Baron, I’m sorry—” For the first time it struck him he still had no idea as to her first name.
She waved his apology to silence.
“Trumbo knows how devious I am. And Diego, for all his studiedly uncultured manner and somewhat rough-and-ready approach to personnel management, is the opposite of triple stupe.”
“Indeed.”
“So they’ll be keeping careful watch lest we slip away. Sadly, my escape preparations failed to include digging a secret escape tunnel out of this bedroom. It was always my plan, but it kept slipping down the to-do list. Curse responsibility! I should have known better than to try to play the role of lord of the manor in real life—”
She shook her head. Outside in the front room Diego was loudly berating. Trumbo, mostly, it appeared; but also his Dogs and the world in general. He seemed affronted at his associates for having both failed and lived. But as indicated, except for the hapless ranking leader, he seemed disposed to allow them to live long enough to die gloriously in his service.
“Anyway. My escape options require waiting upon opportunity. Your friends are going to provide a most splendid one in the form of a diversion. And I expect, sooner rather than later.”
“They shall come for me,” Doc agreed. “Just as Ryan promised. But you seem to expect their imminent arrival. Is that realistic, so soon after repelling the Dogs’ attack?”
“Your friends seem to be of decisive bent,” she said. “And also—we overheard Diego and Trumbo talking about how Diego sent up the Bat Signal for every coldheart and villain this side of the Rocks.”
“The what?”
“You’re not familiar with comic books? From before skydark, you know.”
He shook his head. “I know of the phenomenon. Nothing more.”
“Never mind. Your one-eyed, wicked and undoubtedly wonderful Mr. Cawdor will have learned reinforcements are expected. Unless all the fallen Crazy Dogs and my traitorous former employees, may plutonium eat their guts, got themselves thoroughly chilled—well, would you say it’s a safe assumption that your man will have both thought to ask the question and gotten an answer?”
Doc wiped a hand down his face. “Yes. He may have but a single eye, but it overlooks little. And his methods in interrogation, as in most things, tend to be both cunning and abrupt.”
“All right, then. They’ll be here. So will Dark Lady, if I know the minx, and if she survived. And because I do, most intimately, she did and she will. So—”
She cast a glance at the bed, which lay unmade inside its decadent silken canopy. Regretfully, she shook her head.
“We should have a few hours before your friends come to call,” she said. “But you’re nothing if not resourceful devils, the lot of you. We don’t know for sure when they’ll arrive. And we dare not get caught with our proverbial pants down.”
She gave him a grin. “And speaking of which—don’t you think it’s time you put yours on, Doc?”
* * *
WHEN THE BIZARRE procession came in sight of the farms and neat small homes of Joker Creek, the first thing Krysty saw, riding in the bed of the machine-gun wag, was a half-naked woman running up the road toward them.
A trio of Crazy Dogs on motorcycles pursued her, whooping and laughing so loud Krysty could hear them a couple hundred yards off, even ove
r the snarling of their bikes. They were clearly playing with her, allowing her to move ahead before sprinting after her.
Behind them, a dozen fires burned alongside Joker Creek. For what it was worth, at least two were black—meaning gasoline, meaning most likely Crazy Dogs’ machines. Houses or sheds or crops would burn with brown or white smoke.
One of the Crazy Dog riders led the rest by perhaps twenty yards. He accelerated now, running up on the helpless woman.
“Stop the wag!” Krysty shouted.
The driver was Stuart Marquez, the brown-haired young artisan widowed in the attack on Amity Springs. Though he mostly worked with horse-drawn wags, he showed enough ability handling the Dodge for J.B. to trust him to drive it. Krysty’s loader was the shopkeeper, Kris Kennard, who had also lost her husband to the Dogs. She had a blue bandanna tied around her short red hair, and a quietly determined manner.
The wag stopped. Krysty was already lining up her shot.
She was no trained machine gunner, and this was a long shot to make safely. But this wasn’t her first time shooting one, either. And she felt the fleeing woman had more at risk from her not shooting, so—
The pedestal mount sucked up most of the recoil, but the heavy black blaster’s steel butt plate vibrated against Krysty’s right shoulder in a most unpleasant fashion. She was glad she’d learned to shoot the potent weapon in short bursts.
She managed to keep this one to three rounds. Fire and shock made the very air dance in front of her eyes, but the lead rider and his machine went down.
The following pair braked in alarm. They had either assumed the machine-gun wag approaching openly down the road from Amity Springs was still on their side, or had been preoccupied with their sadistic game.
Either way, it was too late. Two quick bursts put them down, as well.
Kris showed her a grin and a work-reddened thumbs-up.
“Go ahead, please, Stuart,” Krysty called. “Slowly.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The truck accelerated to the walking pace at which it had driven the whole way from Amity Springs. Daring a quick glance back, she saw Dark Lady and Mikey-Bob, trailing by ten yards, gesture for the party of thirty or forty ville citizens to follow them toward Baron Sand’s domain.
They’re so well armed, Krysty thought. And they seem as determined as Kris is. But will they be enough—even with us to help them?
“Krysty!” Kris exclaimed.
She snapped her eyes forward.
No doubt exhausted, the Joker Creek woman had stopped as soon as she realized she was no longer pursued. She stood now panting, her heavy bare breasts riding up and down above the ripped remnants of a peasant dress. She was no longer young, nor slender. But a strenuous farm life had clearly kept her in strong shape.
But now a coldheart suddenly sprang up and grabbed her from behind. Krysty guessed it was the first one she’d shot. He pressed a silver handblaster up under the hinge of the woman’s jaw.
“Come ahead, you bastards!” he shouted. “Come on! I’ll blow her head off! Then I’ll chill you. This is the Dogs’ Pound now. You don’t come to attack us here!”
From the streamward side of the ditch a shadow seemed to flit behind the Crazy Dog. It was mostly dark, but snow-white at the top.
Suddenly the coldheart’s blaster arm was seized and thrust skyward. It cracked a futile shot into a midafternoon sky that showed a few scattered wisps of red-green clouds.
Then a big blade punched through his neck, left to right. Something torqued him counterclockwise, away from his victim, who dropped shrieking to her knees.
Blood fountained as Jak pushed the blade of a big trench knife out through the front of the Dog’s throat.
Before the man dropped Jak twisted his blaster neatly from his dying hand. He waved it jauntily at Krysty, then he disappeared back into the tall weeds of the ditch, which had already grown well green with spring.
Krysty smiled. Her menfolk had gone ahead of the rest, meaning to infiltrate the settlement.
Mildred had remained in Amity Springs to tend to the many people wounded in the Crazy Dogs’ assault. Ryan hadn’t batted his eye at her decision. Mildred was an ace hand with a blaster, and triple good in a fight. But in this battle, one blaster more or less wasn’t going to tip over any tables.
The wag continued to roll forward. Krysty heard the crackle of blasterfire from the houses ahead. Though probably less well-armed than the people of Dark Lady’s ville, Sand’s subjects did have blasters, and they weren’t reluctant to use them in defense against the invaders. One-sided though that battle would undoubtedly prove.
Or would, had it not been for Ryan, Dark Lady, and their respective people.
Dark Lady sprinted out ahead of the slow-rolling pickup truck to bend briefly over the woman Krysty had rescued. She was slumped on her knees, sobbing into her hands. Dark Lady hastily examined her, then signaled that she was uninjured. As the wag passed, the slim woman in black helped the other to her feet and off the road.
Targets began to appear. No doubt making too much racket of their own, the marauding Crazy Dogs were initially unaware their blaster wag had returned—and turned on them. They were involved in kicking down doors, engaging in firefights with locals, and of course, victimizing those they had already subdued.
Krysty chilled them. It was almost appallingly easy. From the dozens of coldhearts in view she could pick out the easiest shots and blast them, with minimal danger to the locals.
Meanwhile she thought to hear shots in the distinctive voice of Ryan’s Scout carbine, and occasional bursts of what she suspected was J.B.’s Uzi. She guessed her four male friends were putting their own pressure on the Dogs.
Being caught between cross fire was one of the greatest fears felt by anybody in battle, Krysty knew. Although a close second was being helplessly blasted by somebody with unmatchable superior firepower, which was also the Crazy Dogs’ case. In short order all the coldhearts in sight were retreating to Baron Sand’s playhouse. Some were actually reduced to fleeing on foot.
When they were still a good three hundred yards out, well in among the farm dwellings, Krysty called for Stuart to halt the wag.
Dark Lady came up alongside the vehicle. Mikey-Bob came with her like a vast, dumpy shadow.
“Good placement,” the gaudy owner said with a brief approving nod. “You can support us from here.”
Krysty grinned. “And the defenders forted up in the house will have a hard time hitting us at this range.”
Plus she thought the machine-gun barrel could use some time to cool off, even though she’d been quite careful to keep her bursts brief. They had found no further spare barrels, either in the Crazy Dogs’ wag or in Dark Lady’s recovered arsenal. Not that Krysty had the first notion how to change barrels if she had a replacement.
Dark Lady nodded. She signaled for her followers to spread out and advance to either side of the road. They set out, working from cover to cover.
Both heads of Mikey-Bob met Krysty’s eyes and nodded, as well. Then the two-headed giant was off, sticking with his mistress like a dog.
Krysty kept her eyes peeled for targets. Kris worked as loader as if she’d trained for the job, keeping the belts of linked ammunition from kinking as she fed them to Krysty, inserting new ones in the loading tray when the big blaster ran dry. She did her tasks with a calm and stolid determination, plus a set expression that might be mistaken for a smile. At a distance.
One thing they had was ample ammunition. Linked cartridges in the appropriate caliber were something Dark Lady had found in the lost lab’s armory, though Krysty’s reluctance to risk overheating the blaster kept her expenditures frugal regardless. She heard shooting from the ragged bunch of Amity Springers as they skirmished forward. Some of them showed a tendency to clump together, at which point she saw
either Dark Lady or Mikey-Bob, who had taken opposite sides of the road, would hurriedly get them to break it up.
“Uh, Krysty?” It was Stuart, their driver. He had his head out his window and turned to look back at her.
“Yes, Stuart—?” she began.
From the right-hand corner of her eye she saw a form step out from behind a lean-to-style shed, just twenty yards down the road on the right.
An AK-47 bellowed on full automatic.
The truck quivered to ringing impacts. The near side of Stuart’s head erupted in gore even as he tried to yank it back inside.
He seemed to melt into the cab. The wag started moving forward, picking up speed.
The sec man continued to blast his whole 30-round magazine into the wag. A bullet smashed a fist-wide chunk out of the rear window and whined past Krysty’s left hip.
The redhead started holding down the big blaster’s trigger even before its muzzle brake swung to bear on the blaster man.
He did a brief dance of death as a volley of rounds sleeted through him, scarcely slowed by flesh or bone.
As he fell, a familiar, terrifying tang went up Krysty’s nostrils and seemed to clutch at sinuses, palate and throat with taloned fingers. Gasoline!
“We’re on fire!” she heard Kris scream.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“So it begins,” Baron Sand said, with a single crisp nod. “Is there still a guard on the window, dear heart?”
The baron was dressed in a loose white shirt, khaki cargo pants, and moccasins with thick leather soles. Given her flamboyant nature, Doc was mildly surprised she possessed an outfit more practical. Nonetheless, if he had learned one thing from his forced—if far from fully onerous—association with the Baron of Joker Creek, it was indeed to expect the unexpected.
“There is, regrettably,” he reported.
“Very well,” she said. She uttered a short laugh. “Riskier this way, but I admit I prefer it. I hate to bore, but if I must, I prefer to bore from within!”