Gaia's Demise

by James Axler

  The headlights illuminated something in the road ahead of them, and J.B. turned to go around. But the obstruction continued onward until reaching a gaping hole in the ground where a strip mall once stood. Having no choice, J.B. angled away from the area and took off due south. But again they found debris blocked their way. The piles of rubble had been connected with chunks of concrete, effectively sealing the area between the hotel and the insurance building.

  "This looks fresh," Krysty warned, her hair blowing in the wind.

  "Head north for the desert!" Ryan commanded. "We know that way is clear."

  The Hummer raced across the predark city, past the arena and the armory, only to find more rubble stacked over ten feet high, rusty iron rods sticking out of the broken concrete like pungi sticks.

  "The little bastards have sealed us in!" J.B. cursed, accelerating along the line of rubble. The crude wall was unbroken, extending from building to building, the only breeches the foundation holes where stores had burned to the ground.

  "Try ramming through!" Dean suggested, trying to watch every direction at once. The attack would come soon. No point to trapping a prey unless you planned on doing some chilling.

  "Can't! This is a Hummer, not an APC!"

  "Try anyway!"

  "Triple red! Here they come!" Ryan snapped, working the bolt on the Steyr and firing smoothly. In the darkness, a greenie cried out and fell to the ground.

  But dozens more darted from the ruins, scrambling over one another in their haste to reach the rolling transport. J.B. swerved wildly, but more were ahead of them. Flooring the accelerator, the Armorer headed straight toward the pack, screaming a battle cry. Suddenly, the M-60 began to chatter and the greenies fell away, missing arms and faces. But as the Hummer plowed into the mob, they parted and dived for the sides of the wag, holding on with one hand while thrusting with knives, hoping for a lucky strike. The companions thrust blasters into leafy faces and blew them off in ruthless slaughter.

  Some of the muties dived under the vehicle, and it thumped over them, their bones cracking audibly. J.B. veered to the left, then the right, losing the howling pack, and raced across the open area between the monoliths. But as they gained some distance, a steady hissing could be heard, along with a metallic linking.

  "They got a tire!" Ryan yelled. "Stop the wag and get that bastard knife to dig it out. These military tires are self-sealing once the hole is clear."

  Brakes squealed in protest as J.B. slowed the Hummer and jumped to the ground. Just as quickly, the companions formed a firing line between the wag and the oncoming greenies. The night was strangely still, not even insects chirping to break the quiet.

  "Shoot on sight," Ryan shouted, facing away from the others to cover their rear. "Our blasters have a lot more range than those blowpipes. Don't let them get close!"

  There was movement in the darkness, and the companions opened up with their weapons, the muzzle-flashes illuminating the night for yards. Greenies were running toward them with inhuman speed.

  "Behind us!" Ryan shouted, firing.

  Jak started to hammer the ruins with the M-60, the heavy weapon laying down a hellstorm of copper-jacketed lead. In the far distance, a glass window shattered and something screamed briefly, then went silent. Howls sounded from behind them again, and as they turned, the noise stopped, then started once more.

  "Ignore the noises," Krysty said, dropping a speed loader into her revolver. "Only shoot when you see them. That's an old trick to rattle us and make us waste ammo."

  "And we contemptuously thought they were unintelligent muties," Doc stated, holding the LeMat in a combat grip to steady his aim. Only six more shots and he was out. "More the fools we."

  Swearing softly, Jak struggled with the bolt to clear a jam, the live cartridge hitting the ground with a musical ting-a-ling. "They not dumb."

  "Got it!" J.B. cried, standing triumphant, the broken blade of a knife shining between the teeth of his pliers. "Bastard thing was wedged in tight. Almost as if they knew exactly where it should go."

  "Get in, use the Uzi," Ryan ordered, sliding across the Hummer. Taking the wheel, the man shoved the transmission into gear and started forward slowly, allowing the companions to climb into the wag.

  "Everybody in?" Ryan shouted as he gunned the engines.

  "Clear!" Dean replied, shoving a fresh clip into the handle of his Browning semiautomatic pistol.

  A greenie stuck its head into view from a manhole and spit. Doc cried out, dropping his blaster to the floor of the wag. Swinging the M-60 about on its gimbal, Jak peppered the manhole with 7.62 mm rounds, but the mutie was gone.

  Krysty lobbed a gren at the hole. The sphere bounced twice and went right into the opening.

  Ryan hit the gas, and the Hummer raced away as flames erupted from the ground, resembling the muzzle-flash of a cannon.

  "Knife!" Mildred ordered, and Dean passed her a blade. The physician sliced apart the sleeve of Doc's frock coat, exposing his upper arm. There was a purplish bruise there, the flesh already tinged with yellow around a tiny barbed dart. Plucking the dart free, Mildred cast it away and cut a crisscross pattern into the flesh. Laboring to breathe, Doc made no response, sweat appearing on his pale face. Sucking at the wound, Mildred's mouth burned as his blood came out. She spit it outside the wag and repeated the process until it no longer hurt her to extract blood from the wound.

  "That'll do," Mildred decided, looking at the spot with her flashlight. "I got the poison out fast enough."

  "Thanks," Doc mumbled, color already returning to his features.

  "Don't thank me yet," the physician warned, opening her med kit and pouring the last few drops of witch hazel on a bandage. "This will hurt even worse. It'll keep you alive, though."

  "I stand ready, madam," he said through gritted teeth.

  Mildred laid the damp cloth on the wound, and Doc sharply inhaled at the contact. She quickly tied it off with a field dressing as he continued to breathe rapidly.

  "Don't use that arm to shoot," Mildred ordered, wiping the blood off her hands. "The recoil of that monster handcannon will open the wound and make you start to bleed. This is only a pressure bandage. Once we're clear, I'll stitch it closed properly."

  Clumsily, Doc lifted the LeMat with his left hand and rested it on the side of the Hummer. "I am no Sissiphant, madam," he stated.

  She nodded in understanding. "You're welcome, you old coot." Just then, a swarm of greenies charged from the darkness into the headlights once more. Ryan wheeled away from them as Jak gave the muties another taste of the M-60. Then J.B. added the ripping killpower of the Uzi, and a handful of the attackers fell over dead.

  This time, the greenies didn't get close and they raced away, leaving them behind.

  "Can't keep this up forever," Ryan stated, shifting gears. "Eventually, they'll get our range and do us all like Doc."

  "You have a plan. I can hear it your voice," Krysty said, using fingernails to yank two spent cartridges from the cylinder of her blaster. She slid in live rounds and eased the S&W closed. "Whatever the hell it is, you have my vote to try."

  "Me, too," Dean added, carefully removing a dart from the headrest of the seat in front of him. He tossed it away, then spit on his fingers and rubbed them clean on his pants.

  Stomping on the gas pedal, Ryan turned the Hummer and headed directly toward a group of greenies they'd encountered earlier. The muties greeted them with a wave of barbed darts that hit the windshield and bounced off.

  Angling for the low point in the barrier, the Hummer started to climb sideways up the mass of debris, the tires spinning wildly as rocks crumbled away under their weight.

  "Shift right!" Ryan bellowed, twisting the steering wheel.

  The companions dived to the right side of the wag, their weight holding it steady as the transport jounced and bumped over the timbers and automobile parts. Then the rubble shifted, and the Hummer slid out of control. There was a strident crash of wood, and the predark wag reared on i
ts aft wheels, threatening to flip over. Ryan hit the brakes, then the gas, regaining control of the machine, and the Hummer madly rolled back onto the street.

  Waiting below, the greenies charged, and the companions fired in a volley at the mass attack. Doc leveled his LeMat pistol and fired twice through the chaos. A greenie loading a blowpipe jerked backward, slamming into a greenie behind. They both fell, blood gushing from huge wounds.

  As the Hummer pulled away, its engine roaring in high gear, a dozen of the muties lay sprawled on the cracked macadam, dead or merely pretending. There was no way of knowing.

  "Now we can leave!" Ryan shouted, fighting the wheel. The wag streaked across the ruins. "It was a diversion to get them going in the wrong direction. We're busting out of here right now!"

  As they zigzagged past the potholes and manholes, the insurance building rose before the companions, its mirrored windows darkly reflecting the tiny racing vehicle.

  "Blow us a hole!" Ryan commanded, heading straight for the tinted-glass doors.

  The 7.62 mm blaster ripped into life, spraying the facade of the insurance building. Cracks appeared in the revolving doors, nothing more. But the large ground-floor windows shattered into a million pieces. Shifting gears, Ryan plowed through the jagged opening and into the building. Cresting the sill, the wag landed on top of a mahogany desk, smashing it under their tonnage. Fighting for control, Ryan rammed into a room divider, and for a brief instant, he saw a skeleton in a pin-striped rags holding a cup slumped before a dark computer screen. Then everything went flying as the Hummer plowed across the office, leaving a trail of total destruction.

  A headlight winked out as Ryan headed straight for a short hallway. The fit was so tight that sparks sprayed out from the armored chassis scraping along the marble facade, then the wag smashed aside a set of double doors and reached the cafeteria. Tables squealed as they were forcibly shoved out of the way, plates, newspapers and chairs flying everywhere.

  The M-60 blaster spoke again, clearing away the windows, sand pouring into the room. But the angle was too steep, and the Hummer couldn't gain enough purchase in the shifting sands.

  "Fireblast, we need a shim!" Ryan shouted, braking to a halt amid the destruction. "J.B., Dean, get that soda machine!"

  The two jumped from the Hummer and raced to the huge soda dispenser. Rocking it back and forth, they got it moving and started slowly waddling it toward the pile of sand pouring in though the broken window.

  "Incoming!" Jak shouted, firing the M-60 into the hallway. A greenie was torn apart and dropped to the carpeting.

  Krysty pulled the pin on a gren and threw it hard at the marble wall. The sphere hit and rebounded out of sight. A few moments later, a thunderous explosion shook the room and smoke poured down the hallway. Jak wasted rounds shooting into the smoke just in case. Muties crawled into view, blood gushing from the hideous stumps of missing limbs. But they still tried to reach the wag even as they died.

  "This is not a fight, but a jihad!" Doc cried in realization. "A holy war of revenge! They will never stop until we're dead."

  A greenie dropped from the ceiling panels, landing amid the companions. Krysty blew off its head, and Dean slit its throat as it fell from the wag.

  Suddenly there was a crash as the soda machine toppled over in place. "Get in!" Ryan shouted, but the others were already aboard.

  Gunning the engines, Ryan headed for the machine, knowing it could never support the awesome weight of the Hummer for more than a few seconds. But those moments should be everything he needed. The hood of the war wag lifted as the wheels rolled on top of the soda machine, metal started to crunch. Ryan hit the gas and shifted gears. The wag started to lose some height. Greenies ran screaming into the room, and Dean threw a gren. The LeMat boomed. A dart hit the inside of the windshield, then with a lurch, the studded tires caught on the sill and the Hummer climbed up and out the window, rolling into the night.

  As they sped away from the ruins, Dean saw the interior of the insurance building come alive with flames, black silhouettes of the muties dashing about screaming in pain and rage.

  "Goodbye, Georgia," Mildred growled, slumping in her seat. "We have three days to rest before reaching Shiloh."

  "Plenty of time," Ryan said, loosening his grip on the steering wheel. "The only point on our side is that we're not racing against the clock."

  "Thank Gaia for that," Krysty said with a smile.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The awful stench was the first thing that Clem noticed. He sniffed again and tried to figure out what it was. Wood smoke, definitely, mixed with the tang of a blacksmith shop and other things he couldn't recognize.

  "Muties?" asked the young corporal riding point alongside him.

  "Don't think so," Clem drawled, chucking the reins. "But I don't like it. Blasters out, and watch yourselves."

  The squad of brown shirts needed no further prompting and drew their longblasters. In an effort to impress Baron Markham of BullRun ville with the seriousness of the matter, Nathan Cawdor had given the ambassadors the best AK-47s they had and plenty of ammo. Where words might fail, anybody too stupid to listen to troopers armed with rapid fires and talking peace was just too damn dumb to let live.

  Cantering over one of the many low hillocks so prominent in northern Virginia, the men stopped in their tracks, the horses whinnying in fear. Lying before them was desolation like nothing they had ever seen. Stretching for perhaps a full mile were the ruins of the ville, cottages and huts crumbling even as they watched. The castle itself was mostly gone, a glowing pool of lava exactly where the predark fort should be standing. Only a few of the outer buildings still existed. Bricks fell from the side of building and hit the ground, bursting into their component ash, the powdery cement blowing away as dry dust. Only the windows seemed to be undamaged, the glass remarkably clear and sparkling clean as if brand new.

  There was a depression in the ground with the remains of fish at the bottom, as if it were once a pond. Even the soil itself was blackened as if charred by a terrible fire. Yet countless trees still stood, the bark peeling off the gray trunks, brittle leaves carpeting the ville even though it was only early autumn. A field of brown crops stretched to the north, every breeze snapping the stalks and clearing whole areas. The smoking corpses of people lay everywhere, their clothing flaking into ash, their crispy skins split apart to expose cooked flesh and black bones. Exploded blasters lay near the hands, the stocks twisted and partially slagged.

  Sprinkled across the horrible landscape were stingwings and birds alike, wings outstretched as if still in flight. Skinny rats scampered among the assorted destruction searching for food, but none was touching the many corpses so readily evident.

  "What the hell happened here?" Clem asked softly, pushing back his bearskin hat. He might have to wear the uncomfortable uniform of Front Royal while in the ville, but on the road, the mountain man quickly returned to his more familiar garb.

  "Not much left," a sec man whispered, the overwhelming feeling of death filling the air.

  "Nothing left," Clem corrected him. At those loud words, the artesian well in the middle of the ville broke apart, the wooden beams bursting into ash and the stones plummeting out of sight into the ground. Minutes passed, but there was no sound of a splash from the blocks striking water.

  Frowning, Clem withdraw a plug of tobacco and bit off a chaw. He had seen a hundred different kinds of chilling, but nothing resembling this. The hooves of his stallion were already thick with the dust of the land.

  A sergeant checked the bulky rad counter they had found hidden in Overton's room at Cawdor Castle. He worked a few dials and tapped the meter. The needle swung about but didn't enter the red area. "Reading clean," he announced. "No rads."

  "Didn't think it was a nuke." Clem chewed thoughtfully. "And it sure as shit wasn't acid rain."

  A soft breeze from the mountains moved over the annihilated fields, the plants crumbling into dust and blowing away. Then a section of th
e castle broke part, the bricks and mortar separating as the masonry tumbled to the ground.

  "Well, lightning didn't do it, either," a private stated firmly. "I seen lightning hit, and it don't do this."

  Sliding off his horse, a lieutenant knelt on the road and reached out to take a handful of the black soil. He carefully inspected it before daring to take a sniff.

  "No smell of fuel or black powder," he said, standing and tossing the piece of dead earth away. "Hell, ain't no chem burn I know. Not napalm, thermite or even willy peter."

  Shifting in his saddle, Clem translated the term in his head. "Willy peter" was slang for white phosphorus. J.B. had told him about the predark chem. It burned ten times hotter than a Molotov cocktail, but was controllable, unlike thermite. Once you ignited that stuff, all a man could do was run away fast, or fry like a chicken on a spit.

  Thunder rumbled, and the man glanced upward to see fiery streaks of orange slashing across the purplish sky, a billowing array of dark storm clouds ravaged by the endless hurricanes of the upper atmosphere. Nothing unusual there.

  Glancing down, he noticed the line in the soil where the strange effect stopped and the green grass started once more. The boundary was sharp, as if a line had been drawn with a sharp knife and a string. What weapon could do that?

  "Dead," a sec man whispered, making the sign of the cross. "All dead."

  "Whatever it was happened fast, too," Clem added, jerking his chin. Off to the side lay the still body of a horse, half of the mare within the circle of destruction, the rest on cool green grass.

  The lieutenant went into the woods and returned with a long green stick. Placing the tip against the black soil, the sec man pressed downward, and it easily sank all the way down until his hand almost touched the surface. Withdrawing the stick, he examined the length of the sapling.