Prodigal's Return

by James Axler

  Until those orders arrived, the tarantula would do the same thing as always: stand, wait and terminate with extreme prejudice any unauthorized personnel on sight. Especially any life-forms not genetically pure humans.

  Chapter Sixteen

  With a start, Althea awoke to the gentle patter of falling rain, and a palm firmly pressed to her mouth. Raw terror filled her, and she clawed for the knife hidden beneath her pillow. But just as she grabbed the weapon, she suddenly recognized the hand and relaxed slightly.

  “Take a sniff,” Dean whispered, removing his hand. “Sniff hard.”

  After a moment she did, and smelled nothing. “Thank Gaia, the acid rain is over.” She sighed. “This is just water.”

  “Which means we have to leave right now,” he stated forcibly, walking over to a small window. Holding on to the wooden bars, he studied the coldheart campsite. Runoff from the pitch roofs was still trickling along the bamboo gutters and pouring into wooden barrels. But mixing with the clean water, the acid rain was thinning to a pale yellow now. Soon it would begin to flow clear, then coldhearts would rouse, to switch barrels and keep the drinkable water from polluting the precious acid rain.

  Converting the acid rain into sulfur to make black powder had been one of the first tricks Dean had taught the coldhearts in order to increase his worth. The process was easy once you knew how, but they had acted as if he were pulling live brass out of his arse. Then he showed them how to use a diluted form of the acid rain to toughen boot leather, and Camarillo had made him a corporal. However, the promotion hadn’t lasted very long, because he’d accidentally on purpose shot a slave sentenced to the lashing post. But now he was a lieutenant, the second in command of the whole camp!

  Dean moved to a wooden shelf. Opening a locked metal chest, he extracted a bulky sack.

  “Are fifteen enough?” Althea asked, climbing out of their bed and stepping into a plain cotton dress with a deerskin bodice.

  “It’ll have to do,” Dean answered, setting aside the sack to tuck a brace of flintlocks into his belt. “Took me a bastard long time to steal this many machetes!”

  “Then they will suffice,” Althea said, slipping a knife into her bodice before lacing it closed.

  Incredibly, the bodice was another contribution by Dean. Usually, the coldhearts allowed the slaves to wear only rags, rain or shine, summer and winter. But now they demanded the female slaves wear the thing because it plumped up their breasts like a gaudy shut on parade. The fact that it also kept them from freezing to death in the snow seemed to go completely unnoticed by the coldhearts, but not by the slaves.

  With this one act of kindness, Dean soon established a covert network of thankful spies in the camp that constantly fed him information on where supplies were stashed, which coldhearts liked to get drunk on sentry duty, and so on. Over time, he had slowly treated each bodice until it was now as tough as boot leather and able to stop the blade of a machete, or the lash of a bullwhip. Blasters could still ace the slaves, but some protection was better than none.

  A knife in the hand was better than a blaster in the bushes, as Doc always liked to say. Just for a moment, Dean thought about all of the good times he had had with the man, discussing philosophy, women, war, and women again. Then he shook his head to dispel the memories, and concentrated on the bloody task at hand.

  “We’re not going to have much time to find your cousin,” Dean said, stuffing a length of rope into a pocket. “If he gets stubborn about leaving his friends behind, I’ll have to knock him out, and we’ll drape him over a horse. But we’ll have no time for friends, or friends of friends.” He turned, looking worried. “You have no other family here, right? Bill is your only blood kin?”

  “Just my cousin…and you,” Althea replied, sliding another knife up her sleeve.

  Smiling gently, Dean stepped closer to cup her face and kiss her lightly. As always, the touch ignited a fire of passion within him, but he broke away to place a small-caliber revolver into her hand.

  “That’s for emergencies only,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “Whatever happens to me, don’t let them take you alive. That’s paramount. Now swear it!”

  “I will not be taken alive,” Althea promised, opening the cylinder to check the load, as he had taught her to do during the long nights. There were four live .22 rounds nestled inside the Ruger revolver, each one carefully cut into what Dean called a dumdum. They were supposed to go into a person like a pinkie, but come out the back bigger than a closed fist. Chilling was guaranteed. How that was possible she had no idea, but Dean was an endless river of knowledge, and she trusted him completely. Even more so than ever after last night. It had been their first time.

  “Where do we meet again?” Dean asked, peeking through the window shutters. On patrol, a coldheart was sloshing through the rain, a hand-rolled cigarette smoking safely under the wide brim of his straw hat. From this distance, he appeared to have no arms, but that was due to the plastic poncho he was wearing. Under it, the sentry was carrying a brace of blasters and a 9 mm Uzi rapidfire.

  “We meet at the second gallows,” Althea answered, slipping the tiny blaster into a pocket.

  “Remember the ABC code?”

  “Alfred, Brian, Charles. Yes, I do.”

  A second guard strolled past the little cabin, this time leading a cougar on a rope harness. The big cat was drenched to the skin and appeared very unhappy. Dean smiled at that. The brick streets were edged with gutters, but the lingering traces of acid rain would still completely ace the animal’s sense of smell. Another small point in their favor.

  “If grabbed from behind, what do you do?” Dean asked, patting his clothing in a military ritual. His father had taught him this trick. It saved vital seconds in a fight to know exactly where every weapon was located without having to pause and search, or even look.

  “Stab with my knife over my left shoulder, going for the face,” she repeated dutifully. “Then around my right hip, going for the groin. When he lets go, I turn and slash the throat.”

  “If we lose each other afterward, where do you go?”

  “My cousin and I,” she corrected, “both go to Front Royal, just east of the Sorrow River, in North Virginny. The local baron is Nathan Cawdor, your cousin. The sec boss is Clem Turpin. I’m to remind him of the battle on Rolling Rock Hill to prove that I know you.”

  “Good. Now, there are how many rounds in your blaster?”

  “Four,” Althea replied. “One for a coldheart, one for my cousin and two for me. Into the temple if possible, or the throat if necessary.”

  “Don’t take a chance on chilling anybody else,” Dean ordered in a hard voice, watching a distant coldheart walking along the top of the camp wall. “If they come for you, eat the barrel, and keep pulling the trigger for as long as you can.”

  “I’ve seen the lashing post, Dean,” Althea said simply, tying the laces of the bodice with a bow. “Forget about me, and concentrate on getting the sandhog. I’ll meet you at the gallows with my cousin.”

  Overhead, thunder rumbled as Dean opened the door to the cabin. He paused to look at Althea, unable to speak for a moment. There were just too many words in his head, and too much feeling in his heart. Stepping in close, he kissed her, long and hard. It wasn’t a goodbye, but a promise of survival, and better times to come. Letting go, he inhaled deeply, and she stroked his face with her fingertips, saying more with the simple gesture than with a thousand words.

  Stepping away, he went to the worktable in the corner, pulling aside a ragged piece of cloth. There was a pile of tools on the table, along with a disassembled rapidfire. Warily lifting a screwdriver, he revealed a small nubbin of fuse stuck in the table. Using a butane lighter, he got it sizzling, then piled the tools over the hole again.

  “Here we go, my love,” Dean said, sliding on a poncho and straw hat.

  Lifting the sack, Althea slung it over a shoulder, then also donned a hat and poncho.

  Now resembling the gua
rds, the couple stepped outside and glanced about to see if anyone was watching. But there was nobody in sight, only the rain, the low gurgle in the gutters mixing with the steady patter of the easing downpour.

  Locking the door, Dean dropped the key into a puddle. Then he shared one last look with Althea, and they separated to their assigned tasks.

  Back in the cabin, the fuse continued to burn along the bottom of the worktable, heading directly toward a small wooden keg.

  With her heart pounding, Althea strolled along the rainy street, and casually nodded in passing to a guard sitting under an woven bamboo awning eating a sandwich.

  “Want some coffee?” he asked, proffering a steaming mug.

  Waving off the offer, she immediately changed direction and headed toward the nearest outhouse. Turning the corner, Althea waited a minute to make sure the guard didn’t follow, then she relaxed her grip on the .22 blaster hidden under the poncho, and started toward the slave pen.

  She heard the soft snoring of the sleeping horses in the corral long before she could see them, and again nodded in greeting at a guard stationed among the animals, an ugly sawed-off scattergun cradled in his wet hands.

  The gurgling water in the brick gutters edging the paved street got steadily louder as she approached the slave pen. The surrounding cluster of punji sticks and barbed wire were almost invisible in the downpour, and she had to navigate purely by the sound of the gutters.

  Passing a cabin, she heard the unmistakable noises of a man and woman having sex. Consensual sex it would seem, from the cries of pleasure. Unbidden, that brought to her mind last night with Dean, but she shoved that pleasant memory aside. If they survived this night, they would have the rest of their lives to enjoy such wonderful things again.

  Deliberately sloshing through a puddle to herald her approach, Althea walked toward the guard stationed at the entrance to the slave pen. Past the punji sticks, she could see the chained people huddling in tight clusters under a very small sheet of plastic, the middle bowed from an accumulation of acid rain. They were visibly shivering.

  “That you, Bob?” the guard asked as a greeting, peering through the misty rain.

  Without a word, Althea stepped in close and rammed her knife up into the man’s jaw, pinning his mouth closed. As he mumbled a scream, she buried her second knife into the middle of his chest. Dean had made her practice the move a hundred times, ramming the knife into a wooden table to get her arm strong enough to drive the blade past the ribs of the guard and reach his heart in a single stroke.

  His eyes going wide, the coldheart rocked backward, then kept on going and landed in a puddle with a splash.

  Standing there breathing hard, her hands empty, blood spreading across the damp bricks, Althea listened with her entire body for any reaction from the wall guards, or some unnoticed coldheart. But there was only the sound of the soft rain.

  Hurrying to the corpse, she got the key from under his poncho and took back her knives, along with his gun belt and blaster. The man was also had a wooden cudgel with nails embedded in the top. Dean called it a morningstar. This was a weapon meant merely to wound slaves, not ace them, and drive them back into the pen. Pain to the chains, as the coldhearts joked. A surge of visceral hatred rose from deep inside her, and Althea fought the urge to scream. Instead, she unlocked the iron gate to the pen and walked to the first group of shivering slaves.

  “I’m looking for Bill Stone,” she said in a deep growl, trying to disguise her voice.

  “Over there, master, by the piss bucket,” a scrawny woman answered, indicating the direction with a dripping finger.

  In a flash of recognition, Althea realized that she knew the woman. It was Lee-Ann RunningHawk, the ville healer. She was covered with bruises, and had several teeth missing

  Kneeling, Althea unlocked the chains, easing it through a thick metal loop embedded into the bricks. “There, you’re free,” she said, pressing a heavy iron key into the palm of the woman. “Now do the same for the next chain. Then have one of them do the next group, and so on.”

  “Is…this a dream?” Lee-Ann murmured, closing her fist around the key, but otherwise not daring to move.

  “Very much real, old friend,” Althea said, removing the sack from under her poncho and passing it over. “Give these only to the strongest, but make damn sure that none of them has ever willingly helped the coldhearts. Chill those bastards immediately, but do it quietly! This is a nightcreep, not another nuke war. Got it?”

  In silent amazement, Lee-Ann took the heavy sack and looked inside. She gasped at the sight of the machetes, pulling one out in slow motion. “Now I know this is a dream,” she whispered, turning the blade about to watch the rain dance off the oily steel.

  Grabbing the woman’s hair, Althea tightened her fingers into a hard fist. Grunting at that, Lee-Ann looked up angrily, the machete in her hand starting a deadly swing that immediately stopped. “Black dust, it is you!” she gasped. “But…but you’re aced! I saw a coldheart drag you away!”

  “I’m far from chilled,” Althea countered, releasing her grip. “Now get sharp, or we’re all buying the farm tonight!”

  “Sure, sure, whatever you say,” Lee-Ann gushed, looking at the key and machete. Slowly, she closed her hand into a hard fist over the former and looked directly at Althea. “What’s the plan?” she demanded, hefting the blade to check the balance.

  “Be quiet, and free the other prisoners,” Althea commanded once more, using small words as if dealing with a drunk. Hellfire, the woman was drunk. Drunk on freedom. “Stay low, move fast and chill your way into the roundhouse. That’s the coldheart armory. Get blasters, and come out shooting. Ace anybody not wearing rags.”

  “What about those mutie cats?” Lee-Ann asked in a worried tone.

  In the distance, they heard a gasoline engine sputtering into life.

  “Already got somebody working on that,” Althea replied with a confident grin, starting to turn away.

  “A coldheart named Hannigan wanted to know where the ville hides its cache of predark cans,” Lee-Ann said quickly. “Bill tried to make a deal, barter the food for our release. But they…he…he’s been to the post.”

  That single word crystallized the universe around Althea into immobility. Mutely, she nodded in understanding and headed toward the plastic bucket the coldhearts let the slaves use as a communal toilet.

  Even with the rain still coming down, she could smell the contents of the bucket from yards away. Lying on the bricks nearby, a shivering man was chained to a post, his head bowed as if in prayer.

  “Billy?” she asked, kneeling on the wet pavement.

  As if it weighed a thousand tons, Bill Stone sluggishly raised his head to reveal the pair of scarred holes where blue eyes had once been located.

  “No more, please,” he whimpered, lifting a three-fingered hand wrapped in dirty bandages. “Please, don’t cut off any more of me! I told you where the food is hidden. Under the rock, near the ville gate. It’s there, I swear! Please, I’ll do whatever you want! Just no more cutting…?.”

  Dragging the chain, he tried to scuttle away, the end of his left leg scarred and blistered, the foot missing entirely. When he broke into wild sobbing, Althea also started to weep, as she leveled the stolen Ruger and pulled back the slide. In this wretched condition, there was no way he could climb over the wall with her and Dean. She desperately wished there was something else to do, but there were only two hard choices. She either abandoned him here to be taken apart like a blaster in need of oil, or set him free forever.

  “Hush now, cousin,” Althea whispered, pressing the barrel to his temple. “Time to sleep.”

  “Al…Althea?” William asked in a startled whisper.

  “Goodbye,” she said, and squeezed the trigger.

  The 9 mm blaster sharply cracked, rocking back his head, and he toppled over limply. In spite of the downpour, the noise oddly seemed to echo across the entire camp dozens of times, rapidly building in volume and po
wer until it rivaled the thundering storm.

  What was that? she wondered, hunching her shoulders. Dean had rigged a firebomb in their cabin, not a keg of plas-ex!

  Unexpectedly, a bright white light banished the night, and a column of flame rose from a distant section of the wall, the gate lifting off the railroad tracks to tumble away and violently crash into the base of a guard tower. In a splintery explosion, the wooden support legs were smashed and the cupola on top came hurtling down. The armed coldhearts trapped inside briefly screamed, until it reached the brick-lined street, and then they went mercifully silent.

  Holstering the blaster, Althea sprinted from the slave pen, leaving the puzzled prisoners behind. She had set them loose and given them some blades. The rest was up to them. She wished them well, but they were little more than a diversion to keep the coldhearts busy while the three of them… Her heart stopped beating for a moment at the horrible memory of what she had done.

  Window shutters were slamming open all over the campsite, the cold bluish light of shine lanterns spilling into the rainy streets. An alarm bell began to ring softly, then she heard the rattle of a rapidfire, followed by the dull boom of a black powder weapon.

  Silently boiling out of the slave pen, the prisoners charged along the wet streets, waving the machetes. Coming out of an outhouse, a yawning coldheart fell under the onslaught, hacked to pieces. His blaster was taken and the mob raced onward, spreading across the camp, acing anybody they found.

  Throwing open the shutters of a cabin, a coldheart cut loose with a rapidfire, the withering hail of hot lead sending a dozen of the former slaves tumbling to the unforgiving street. Then a man rose alongside the cabin and hacked off the coldheart’s arm. Torrents of red blood gushed from the hideous wound as the coldheart bellowed in agony.