by neetha Napew
"Right. One of those contingency plans from Nerdsville."
"North. You know where?" Sudden hope flooded his heart.
"No. Sorry, Jim. I know a little about a lot, but things like Aurora were on a high need-to-know basis. Very high. Fifteen floors up over my poor old head."
"The guys with the guns?"
"I heard about a kind of contra-grouping. Senior officers, some politicos, men with big money in industries. Powerful men. And a few women. Called themselves the Hunters of the Sun."
Their conversation ended abruptly as the machine gun suddenly opened up again, bullets ripping through the weathered walls of what used to be the old schoolhouse in Calico.
THE CONTRAST with the time, only short weeks ago, when they'd been attacked back at Stevenson Base, was very considerable.
Then they'd all been severely disoriented, virtually weaponless and mentally unprepared to do much to defend themselves.
Time had passed.
Times had changed.
Now they were armed and more than ready to kick some ass.
Jim Hilton had taken charge of their defense, making sure that Sly and Heather were safely at their center. He picked a group of buildings near the top of a hill, overlooking the parking lot, placing everyone out in a skirmish line.
After that initial burst of firing, the attackers remained silent. The obvious guess was that they were closing in under cover of night. The moon had almost vanished behind a skirt of thickening cloud, and midnight was drawing nearer.
One major problem was that the defenders had no way of knowing how many men were out there. It could be only three or four. Then again, it could be half a regiment.
Jim gripped his Ruger Blackhawk Hunter, staring into the blackness, fingers firm on the cushioned grip with the walnut inserts. The thirty-five-ounce, six-shot, .44-caliber revolver felt right. Ready for use.
He'd put himself at the center. Nanci had gone to the far left, without being told, nearest to the last sound of shooting. She was dripping with weaponry: the scoped rifle on her shoulder, the matched Heckler & Koch automatics on the hips and the machine pistol in her hand.
Jeff Thomas had followed her, carrying his Smith & Wesson 4506, an eight-round .45. A broad-bladed butcher's knife swung on his left hip as he scampered after the tall woman.
Steve Romero was next, between the ex-journalist and Jim Hilton. The tall skinny radio expert had a polished bowie knife sheathed on the hip with a small blued Beholla .32 automatic balancing it. The unidentifiable sawed-off scattergun was in his right hand. None of his weapons would be much use above a range of twenty-five yards.
"But let the bastards get close," he'd said with a grin at Jim.
Kyle Lynch was next along from Jim Hilton, to the right, with the excellent Mannlicher rifle lying at his side. A Mondadori .32 automatic was holstered on his belt.
Carrie Princip completed their lineup. like Steve Romero, she wasn't armed for distance. She had the Smith & Wesson 2050, the six-shot, .22 revolver with the snub, four-inch barrel.
Heather was resting flat on the ground, right behind her father. "Couldn't I have a gun, Dad?" she whispered to him.
"Sorry, kitten."
"Dad!"
"Sorry, honey. Forgot about calling you 'kitten.' Just stay there and keep quiet. If things go wrong, head out back and keep running."
"They aim to chill us, Dad?"
"You saw what they did to the chopper. Not too friendly."
The first noise was a single snapping round from Nanci Simms. The echo from the rifle rolled around them.
It was followed by a yelping gasp, and the clatter of someone falling down.
"One less, Jim," she called.
He thought he glimpsed someone moving out of the corner of his vision, but he couldn't be certain. The desert at night was eternally silent yet filled with an infinity of tiny sounds.
The voice seemed to come from about three hundred yards ahead of him. Immediately Jim checked behind to make sure it wasn't a trick to distract them. But there was nothing there.
"Yo, the camp! You hear us?"
"Don't say anything, Jim," hissed Nanci.
"I know that," he retorted, angry that she thought he could be that stupid.
"We don't mean no harm. Only that the chopper was after us. We haven't done anything to justify that kind of retaliation."
Whoever he was, the man out in the blackness was well educated, with a pleasant, convincing kind of a voice.
"Hello! Hello in there!"
The reply came from just to the left, behind Jim Hilton, making him jump.
"Hello!"
Steve Romero was quickest to react. "Sly. Keep your mouth shut."
"Man was friendly, Dad." The voice was soft, gentle and puzzled.
"Yeah, son. But he's not really a friend. Trying to trick us. Don't say a word. How do we keep our lips when we want to be quiet?"
"Huh?"
"When we keep quiet, our lips have to be… be what, Sly?"
A chuckle of delight. "Oh, yeah. Like a great big zipper."
"Good." Steve turned toward Jim. "Sorry 'bout that, Skipper."
"No problem."
"Nice one of you showed some manners. If he wants to come out here, then we'll guarantee his safety. Rest of you keep your silence, and we can't make any promises."
Jim kept checking behind him. There was just enough filtered moonlight for him to notice Nanci Simms doing the same.
"Losing patience. You saw what happened to the Chinook. Likely to find yourselves going down under a triple-red code." Anger flared in the voice. "We got the men and the firepower to wipe you out without a trace."
Sly spoke very quietly to himself. "Gee, Dad was sure right. Man isn't friendly. The painted smile's gone."
For over half an hour there was no more talk and no sign of life out in the raven black desert. Then the voice made one last effort. The anger had been carefully smoothed over, so that it was almost gone.
"Captain Hilton. Jim. We know who's there. Know about your mission. General Zelig's sent us to get you and Marcey Cording and the rest of you and bring you to safety."
Marcey Cortling had been second in command of the Aquila and had been decapitated in the landing crash. It was odd that the invisible speaker knew so much and yet so little.
Out of cautious habit, Jim Hilton glanced behind him again, toward the township.
He saw half a dozen shadowy figures creeping toward him, less than twenty feet away.
Chapter Six
Two months earlier Jim Hilton would certainly have hesitated for a fraction of a second, with his mind blurred by the sanctity of human life. Something to preserve, not destroy.
But that was then.
This was now.
The wide-spurred hammer clicked back, falling on the full-metal-jacket round.
The gun kicked, barrel seeking the sky. But Jim was braced and ready, wrist strong. Beyond the flash of the muzzle, he saw one of the figures go tumbling out of sight, as if someone had pulled a rug out under its feet.
There was no need to shout a warning to the others in his group. The boom of the GPF-555 Ruger was enough to alert them to the sneak attack.
Heather screamed and Sly jumped up, waving his arms as if he were being attacked by a swarm of vicious mosquitoes.
The clouds pulled away from the serene silver moon, enabling Jim to glimpse what they were up against. There were five or six men, three in dark-blue-and-black camouflage jackets. The others wore brown sweaters, with leather patches on elbows and shoulders. All were carrying Uzi machine pistols.
But the shock of Jim's lightning response had given the edge to the defenders of the ridge. Nanci had swung around like a scorpion, opening up with her own Port Royale machine pistol, spraying lead at the uniformed attackers.
Carrie's little .22 popped away at the end of the line, and Steve Romero's sawed-down shotgun roared, sending a jet of flame into the night.
Jim took careful aim
and put down the farthest of the men, who'd already turned to try to run away. In the moonlight he saw a disk of smashed bone torn from the top of the skull, hurtling off into the night like a Frisbee, blood and brains erupting from the shattered head.
"Stop shooting!"
The voice belong to Nanci Simms, cutting through the savage exultation of the firefight. Jeff was last to check himself, another big .45 slug booming out across the sandy wasteland.
"We put them all down," she called, voice ragged, her tall figure loping toward Jim Hilton at the center of their defensive line.
"Sure?"
"Yeah. But there might still be some living. Come with me. Rest of you cover us. Jeff, you and Kyle watch out for any more coming in from the other side."
"They've still got that machine gun." Kyle was blowing hard, as though he'd just run five miles across sand dunes.
"Yeah," agreed Jeff. "They open up with that, and we're shredded meat."
"They just lost at least a third of their men. Maybe as much as two-thirds. They're hardly likely to rush us again, are they? See sense, Jefferson." Nanci turned to Jim. "Come on."
The pebbles rolled under his feet, and he had a sudden, irrational fear that he might fall and put his hand onto the face of a corpse. As they walked over the ridge and down the slope, Jim levered three more rounds into the big handgun.
"I counted seven," said Nanci. "Liked your shooting, Jim. Grace under pressure. You would be very surprised to know how rare that is. Ah, here's the first of the coolers."
The moonlight seemed to be getting brighter, and Jim found he was hunching his shoulders in anticipation of a sniper's bullet splintering his vertebrae into powdered bone.
The man was wearing one of the brown sweaters, patched at elbow and shoulder. His Uzi was a few feet away from him, muzzle down in a patch of soft, dark sand.
He'd been shot in the back, trying to run away, the bullet hitting him below the shoulder on the left side and exiting through the center of the chest, leaving a hole the size of a small plate.
"How d'you make sure they're really dead?" asked Jim. "I mean… not him. Obvious. But one of them might be faking it."
Nanci turned to him. "I confess that you choose the oddest moment for your queries. You don't bend over them and check the pulse beneath the ear, if that's your idea. That way you get your own throat opened up if they're 'faking it,' as you so appropriately put it."
Jim tried to ignore the sarcasm. "So how do you make sure?"
"Like this." She lifted her polished boot and stamped down, aiming the heel at the eye of the corpse. There was a horrible liquid grating sound. The head rocked, but the dead man didn't move.
"You do that and watch to see if they try to get up. If they don't, then it means they are no longer dwelling this side of the dark river, Jim."
All but one of their attackers had been killed outright or had died within a minute or so of being gunned down.
Some of them had several bullet wounds stitched across their chests or backs.
Nanci Simms kicked one of them over, pointing down with the muzzle of her machine pistol. "Haven't lost my touch," she said. "Look at that pattern. Trig and trim as an Amish quilt."
There were three 9 mm bullet holes in a straight line, perfectly spaced out.
Jim caught the faint rustle of a sound from a large clump of dead sagebrush to their right. The woman also heard it.
"Got him," she said very quietly.
Despite her height and age she moved with an uncanny balance and elegance, cat-footing her way toward the noise.
Jim Hilton started in to follow her, but she waved him back with a peremptory gesture of the Port Royale.
He stood in the stillness of the night, holding the Ruger loosely down at his side. Behind him the rest of their small group of survivors were waiting, and his mind began to tussle with the overwhelming problem of what they might do next. Where they might go.
But the adrenaline rush from the firefight was still flooding through him, and Jim found himself unable to look logically toward any sort of future. It was all too uncertain.
"Jim?"
"Yeah?"
"Here."
"He still alive?"
"Only just. Got his ticket for the last train west and one foot already aboard the caboose."
Mesquite crackled as he pushed through, finding the woman kneeling by a dark figure.
The man was on his back, moaning in a soft, bubbling voice. It was only just possible to make out an occasional mumbled word. Blood, black in the moonlight, was frothing around his lips, dappling the stark pallor of his face.
"Lungs," said Nanci. "And a couple of bullets through the guts." She laughed. "Think it was Carrie's popgun did the damage. Just shows that it's not the size but where you put it that really makes the difference."
"Any chance of finding out who he is? Who the rest of them are?"
"No. I'd work on him if I thought it was worth it. But his mind's locked away into his own passing. Too late."
Jim filed the casual, thrown-away reference to being ready to "work on him."
"Cold…feet frozen…can't any…didn't say guns ready…"
Nanci straightened. She swung her right foot back and kicked the dying man with surgical precision, the toe of her boot cracking into his head just below and behind the right ear.
The impact made a surprisingly quiet, moist thudding sound.
"That it?" asked Jim.
"Sure. That's it. I think we should go and rejoin the others now. Nothing more out here for any of us. He carried no identification at all."
"Think he was one of those… what did you call them, Nanci?"
"Hunters of the Sun? Very possible. I don't know enough about them to be certain of this sort of modus operandi. Trained men, well armed, clothed in a sort of uniform. Paramilitary grouping." She nodded, her pale blue eyes seeming almost white in the silvered light. "Would make sense. Think we were lucky, Jim. They didn't expect us to be well armed and ready for them. They won't be so careless next time."
THE SOUND OF A TRUCK and several motorbikes came roaring out of the blackness roughly a half mile north of Calico.
Jim and Nanci Simms had only just rejoined the others, and they all stood, silent, listening.
"Going away," said Sly Romero, quickly recovered from the shock of what had gone down less than a half hour earlier.
"Right." His father nodded. "Good boy. They're going away, all right."
"How many dead?" asked Carrie.
"Seven. All of them that tried to sneak in and back-stab us. All dead." Realizing that he was still holding the heavy pistol, Jim slid it quickly into the oiled leather holster.
Heather was looking at him, and he took a hesitant step toward her, but the young girl turned away from him.
The sound of the engines was fading off to the north.
"Think they're really going, Nanci?" Jeff Thomas was shuffling from foot to foot, like a little boy bursting to go to the rest room.
"Yeah. And stop hopping around, will you. Look like you have to take a leak."
Carrie brushed dust off her hands. "If we keep a guard, we could maybe go back to bed."
"Sure," agreed Jim.
"Then what?" said Steve.
Jim didn't have any answer for that one.
Chapter Seven
The first yellow light of dawn came creeping in through the broken windows of the room where Jim Hilton and his daughter had spent the night.
The ceiling was stained and cracked plaster, decorated with a variety of graffiti. Some had been done with spray cans, but most of them showed the peculiar smeared effect of writing with a candle.
Heather stretched, the T-shirt tight across her shoulders. "Dad?"
"What is it, love?"
"I dreamed about Mom last night."
"I dreamed about her during the time I was coming home. And you and Andrea."
"It was just Mom and me."
He sat up, rubbing the stub
ble around the jaw-line. "Tell me, Heather."
She stood up, kicking her way out of the sleeping bag. "We were in a big art gallery. Like an old bus station, with lots of rooms. Metal galleries and walkways. Nobody else around. Pictures of saints and stuff. Lots of gold and reds and blues. Sort of nice."
Jim rubbed sleep from his eyes, remembering that he'd helped to slaughter seven men only a few hours ago.
"Go on."
"Mom was laughing at some of the pictures. Said that the infant Jesus had a fat ass in one of them. Made me laugh a lot."
"Your mother was good at making people laugh," he said.
"Sure. Then I was looking at this picture that had some real triple-ape demons, with pincers and gallows. Looked up and she'd vanished, Dad. I was there all alone."
He nodded. "Then what?"
Heather shook her head, and he could see unshed tears glistening in her blue-gray eyes. "That was it! Just that. I turned round, and Mom was gone. Just like she really went and…"
The girl's hand went to her mouth, and she scampered outside, bare feet padding in the soft California desert dust.
Jim followed her out, but respected her need for privacy. He moved toward Kyle Lynch and Steve Romero, who had got a fire going with the help of Sly. There was some instant soup bubbling away, its steam rising into the cool morning air.
Jim checked his wrist chron. "Coming up to seven," he said. "Good to have a quiet night. I thought I heard coyotes."
Jeff Thomas was carrying a pile of wood he'd collected around the backs of the surviving buildings in Calico. "Yeah. I heard them, too. Sounded like they were fighting."
Nanci Simms was walking just in front of him, looking like a fashion ad for outdoor casual wear for the older woman. The pants of her khaki pantsuit were tucked into the tops of the polished boots. She'd left the Port Royale behind, but the matched pair of automatics were elegantly holstered.
"They were fighting, Jefferson, dear. Fighting over the meat we so generously left out for their suppers last night."
"Supper?" said Carrie Princip, closing her eyes. "Oh, I get it. You don't think we should have maybe buried them? Not just allowed them to be torn by scavengers?"
Jim answered her. "No. Short and simple, Carrie. No."