Bloodfire

by James Axler

  “Splashing,” Kate said. “It’s goddamn splashing, isn’t it?”

  “Could be,” Eric said hesitantly. “But that can’t be right. We’re in the middle of the Deathlands! Ain’t no water for hundreds of miles!”

  “There is now,” the Trader said, rising from her chair and going to the periscope near a blaster rack. Raising the Navy device to its full height, Kate pressed her face to the cracked eyepiece and slowly turned for a full sweep.

  “Found ’em,” she announced, staying hunched over, hands on the guide posts. “Ten, twelve men on foot to the east. Two hundred yards.”

  Kate stood and lowered the periscope into the floor. “Get razor, people! They got a swarm of millipedes on their ass!”

  “How many?” Jake asked.

  “Too many!”

  “Lock and load!” Roberto commanded, spinning in his chair and racking the bolt. “Close all ports! We go on canned air, right now!”

  A series of hard slams sounded throughout the entire length of the vehicle, as the war wag sealed every opening with sheet steel, then the ceiling lights and control boards dimmed for a moment as the air conditioners kicked on and a cool breeze started blowing from the ceiling vents.

  Then every blaster turned toward the strangers from the east, and the horde of slavering muties close behind them.

  Chapter Ten

  “Son of a bitch!” J.B. cursed, putting a long spray from the Uzi into the face of the sec droid hunter. The 9 mm rounds ricocheted off the machine flying in every direction, hitting cans on the shelves and the corpses lying on the floor.

  “Outside!” Ryan shouted, firing his Steyr SSG-70 as fast as he could work the bolt.

  Firing every step of the way, the companions backed out of the supermarket when Krysty cut loose with the H&H Nitro Express. A lance of flame extended from the twin barrels, the discharge deafeningly loud even in the open air. The first .475 round glanced off the droid, denting the alloy rod of its torso, the ricochet whining away into the distance. The second hit the joint of the left arm, ripping away the cover plating. Instantly, Ryan concentrated his longblaster there, the 7.62 mm rounds slamming into the exposed gears until the array from the soft lead froze the arm in position. But the spinning buzz saw at the end of the ferruled arm never slowed.

  As the machine came through the smashed windows of the preDark building, Doc held the LeMat in a twohanded grip, waiting an insanely long moment before firing. The handcannon boomed like thunder as the .44 miniball slammed into the machine with triphammer force. The left eye lens shattered from the impact, and the droid started for the scholar as he fired a fast four times, trying for the other eye but missing.

  Moving among the dead cars, the companions tripped several times on the dried corpses on the black pavement. This was the worst place to hold a fight.

  Working the bolt on her Remington longblaster, Mildred fired twice at a car near the droid, the sporting rounds punching neat holes through the hood of the vehicle, but failing to ignite the engine. The gas tanks were as dry as dust.

  Leaving the sidewalk, the droid bumped into a car and the desiccated corpse behind the steering wheel fell over. In blinding speed, the droid rammed its buzz saw through the glass to behead the dead woman and the passenger beyond.

  Swinging the lever on his Winchester, Jak hit the good eye twice, with no result except for making the machine slow its advance slightly.

  “Any grens?” the albino teen demanded, thumbing fresh rounds into the side port of the Winchester.

  “Nothing!” J.B. replied, giving it another long burst from the Uzi. “Lost the last implo gren escaping from the ville!”

  Slinging the Steyr, Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and started firing steadily, hitting the sec droid every time. Dean launched a quarrel from his heavy crossbow that glanced off the droid’s body. Stepping behind a luxury car as protection, Doc holstered the LeMat and drew the Webley to fire a fast six times, hitting the droid only on the left side. The sheer force of the booming hardball ammo cut nicks into the shiny chrome rod body, making it spin once, momentarily out of control.

  As it faced the wrong direction, Krysty fired the H&H Nitro, hoping the rear armor might be thinner than the front. The massive .475 nitro round put a dent in its domed head the size of a fist, but nothing more.

  “How many more?” Ryan demanded, over the booming SIG-Sauer.

  “Last round!” she replied, shoving in a single fat .475 round into the breech of the elephant rifle.

  “Save it!” he ordered.

  Walking backward onto the curb, the woman nodded and drew her S&W .38 to fire twice at the droid.

  Holding a breath to steady his aim, Dean launched another iron quarrel. But this time, the bolt smacked into the ruin of the broken lenses and went halfway into the dome. The machine frozen motionless for a long pause, and the companions took the opportunity to run for more distance.

  Sparks cracking along the conductive shaft of the arrow, the machine removed the quarrel from its head with a set of pinchers, then made loud clicking noises before starting after the escaping companions. The hole was now covered with steel leaves.

  Fireblast, it was self-repairing! Grimacing in rage, Ryan tried for the opening anyway, but the machine was now keeping its weak point turned away from them.

  “Sign!” Mildred shouted, firing skyward.

  The rest of the companions copied her angle and threw a hail of lead at a large hanging neon sign. Under the brutal pounding, the corroded supports ripped free from the brick building, and it plummeted straight down onto the sidewalk in a strident crash of glass and steel that missed the droid by mere inches. Going around the obstruction, the droid continued relentlessly after its prey, its buzz saws whining loudly as the telescoping arms extended for a kill.

  “Get thee back, Geryon!” Doc snarled, lowering the spent Webley to pull out the LeMat and shoot twice, the Civil War piece blowing flame and thick smoke along the sidewalk. The first round punched a hole in a fireplug with no result whatsoever, and the second struck the gas tank of a police motorcycle, making the corpse fall off the bike. The droid attacked the movement in mindless fury.

  Then stepping around a corner, the old man switched weapons again, breaking open the top-loading Webley. The action made all of the spent cartridges jump out and he quickly shoved in live cartridges.

  Ryan and J.B. maintained a steady fusillade as they backed into view past the corner, then Mildred, Jak and Krysty gave cover fire so the two men could reload their blasters.

  “This isn’t accomplishing shit!” Mildred growled, firing the Remington and working the bolt to eject the spent brass. “We need a bazooka!”

  Abandoning the heavy crossbow and quiver for speed, Dean glanced at a fire station across the crowded street. From here, he could see the formidable axes hanging in the wall, the adamantine alloy blades designed to cut through lesser metals. The idea appealed to him for only a moment, when he realized that using the ax would put him within the reach of the buzz saw. Then the boy caught a whiff of smoke in the air. They had to be near the burning fuel truck. But try as he might, Dean couldn’t think of a way that might be useful in this fight.

  Snapping off shots from the SIG-Sauer, Ryan glanced in every direction to try to find something useful in the preDark city. Then he spied the fire station. Yeah, that might just work. In a flash, the man started sprinting through the maze of vehicles and disappeared inside the station.

  “Here it comes!” J.B. shouted, firing a short burst at the machine. A jam caught in the ejector port, and the Armorer feverishly worked the arming bolt to clear the bent brass to start shooting again.

  The rest of the companions maintained their fire while retreating from the machine. Unlike its brethren found inside certain redoubts, this one was in perfect working condition, and if it had been armed with any kind of a distance weapon, they would all have been chilled by now. But most droids had been designed more as a terror weapon, built to deter people from entering to
p secret facilities like the redoubts rather than to commit wholesale slaughter.

  Moving into the street again, the companions shot at the droid and threw the occasional round into the fuel tanks of the better condition cars, hoping for an explosion, but it never happened.

  Shoving a pizza van aside, the sec hunter droid charged for the companions, and they turned and ran. But as they passed the fire truck parked before the station, there came the sound of running boots, and Ryan appeared on top of the cab with a shining ax in one hand and a cloth bundle in the other. At the noise, the droid turned and Ryan spun out the fireproof blanket to cover the machine. As it raised both buzz saws to cut away the heavy material, Ryan jumped from the top of the cab, swinging the ax with all of his strength. The ax struck the right buzz saw, shattering the spinning blade with a ringing crash. Instantly, the shrapnel sprayed out in every direction, and for a split second, the one-eyed man saw his own distorted reflection in a flying chunk of steel as it passed his head.

  “Now!” Ryan shouted, diving aside.

  As the droid removed the blanket, Krysty, standing only a few yards away, fired, the muzzle-flash from the H&H almost touching the machine as the remaining red lens shattered into a million pieces. Recoiling to ride the force of the blow, the sec hunter droid rallied within seconds, blindly thrusting out its remaining blade to hit cars, walls and lampposts.

  Now the companions hammered the damaged machine with blasterfire as slim burnished rods rose from within the armored body. Bending and flexing, the antennae probed the air and then once more the hunter started forward.

  “LISTEN UP, Gordon,” Kate said into a microphone. “Pull back to the dry sand and keep Two to cover the cargo vans! Those bugs could eat the tires off the rims in a heartbeat! Form a break with you at the center, and use the flamethrower if they get close.”

  Even as they watched on the monitors, a man tripped in the wet sand and fell. The rest of the people kept going, leaving him behind. Slipping and sliding in the muck, the man finally got to his feet only to scream as he saw a millipede crawling across his chest. Rearing its head, the insect buried its pincers into his flesh and started sawing off a piece. His screams became shrieks as he grabbed the bug and tried to pull it loose, its hundreds of legs ripping the skin off his fingers. Than another bug bit him in the leg and he dropped, wailing in agony.

  The port-side .50-cal banged once, and the man dropped lifeless into the bloody water. The bugs converged on the twitching corpse and starting a feeding frenzy.

  “Roger that, Chief,” the bald man said, his picture on a vid monitor slightly out of sync with his words. “We’ll keep the hull cold in case you folks have to get on board.”

  “Fuck that,” she growled. “You get hot and stay that way! Pump as much electricity through the chassis as the busbars can carry. If the bugs get inside Two, you’ll be SPAM in a can for their dinner. Now move!”

  Unhappy at the orders, Gordon just nodded. His picture began to shake as War Wag Two started pulling back, with the cargo vans already pushing ahead.

  Rolling the big wags into the muddy water, Trader could see the people splashing frantically toward the machine. Friend or foe, it made no difference when millipedes were on your tail. Close behind them the muddy water seemed to boil in a black shiny patch twenty feet wide and about as long. That was a nuking lot of bugs. On a side monitor a camera had zoomed in for a close shot of the muties. The bodies were segmented, the rear pincers arched like a scorpion about to strike, and the front pincers were snapping with the sound of crumpling paper there were so many.

  “Missiles armed,” Jessica said, her hands poised above the fire-control panel.

  “Too late,” Kate replied, grabbing her Ingram and arming the blaster. “At this range the blast would chill the people, and they got kids.”

  “So what do we do?” Jake asked, staring out the front window. “Light our flamethrower? Use the grens?”

  “Wait for it,” Kate ordered, standing behind the man, her hands on a ceiling stanchion. “Wait for it…now! Charge!”

  The huge machine rolled forward, its headlights flaring and the air horns sounding like the clarion call of doomsday. The terrified people darted away from the vehicle as it continued onward until reaching the bugs. Suddenly, the cameras showed the fat insects everywhere, and a skittering noise came from the sides and roof.

  “Zap ’em,” Kate shouted. “Quarter power!”

  “Quarter? But that’s not enough to…Right!” the man said in understanding, and dialed down the voltage to barely enough to stun a human and flipped the switch. The monitors went crazy, scrambling and strobbing as the raw current pulsed through the armored hull. From every direction there came high-pitched keens, and a score of the insects splashed into the water stunned or dead.

  As the monitors cleared, Kate saw the people still moving, the low voltage dissipated through the yards of water not enough to slow them. But those bugs in direct contact with the metal hull were fried. Not all, but enough.

  “Hit ’em again!” Kate commanded, watching the screens. The surviving bugs were concentrating on the killer thing in their midst, the splashing meat momentarily forgotten.

  “Again!” she ordered, watching the reserve-power gauges drop quickly. “Again!”

  “Almost there…” Roberto announced from the periscope. “Just another sec. Okay, they’re on dry sand!”

  The Trader bared her teeth in a feral grin. “About goddamn time. Now give me full power! Everything we got!”

  The lights and monitors went out as the nuke batteries put every volt through the defense grid welded onto the outer hull. Keening screams sounded in every direction, and several of the insects on the Plexiglas windshield burst into flames, blue sparks crawling over their dripping wet bodies. The crackling continued for several minutes, the water around the war wag starting to steam until the reserve banks were exhausted.

  As Jake released the switch, the engines started once more and everything came back online. Then a monitor winked out as a fuse blew, a curl of smoke rising from under the control board. The bald man rushed to fix the matter, while the others took stock of their own equipment, flipping switches and checking meters.

  “No damage, Chief,” Jake reported, spinning in his chair.

  “That we know of,” Roberto muttered, trying to see the muddy ground below the wag. But the angle was wrong. Then suddenly an alarm sounded and a red light flashed on the damage board.

  “Nuking hell, we got a fire in the kitchen,” Jessica reported, working the controls. A monitor came to life and showed swirling smoke, laced with fiery orange. “There must have been some arcing through the shutters.”

  “You, you and you, go handle it,” Kate commanded, pointing to the gunners. “Foam only, no water, until you’re sure it was an arc and not a live short circuit.”

  Grabbing preDark pressurized cans from wall mounts, the men rushed down the corridor and out of sight.

  “Kill that alarm,” Kate said, and the wag went quiet. Going to the transponder, she took a hand mike from a rack and pressed the transmit switch. “Gordon, you copy?”

  “We’re here, Chief,” he replied over the ceiling speakers. “There’s smoke coming out your ass, port side.”

  “We got a team on it already,” Kate replied succinctly. “What about the bugs?”

  There was a crackle of static. “I think you got them all. Can’t see any movement on this side.”

  Which didn’t mean shit, since the muties were notoriously hard to ace. Even the ones lying under the water might still be alive, just unconscious for a while. They could have found a chink in the armor and were burrowing into the wag as she tried to decide what to do. Seconds counted now.

  “We’re going to have to do a hard recce,” the Trader said, taking the Stetson off the wall and patting it into place. “Gordon, get ready to burn us in case of trouble.”

  There was a brief pause. “Confirm, Chief,” the second in command of War Wag Two said
reluctantly. “Will do.”

  “Get hard,” Roberto ordered, and everybody grabbed a blaster from the wall rack or pulled a weapon from beneath the seats. For a moment, the room was filled with metallic snaps and clicks as the blasters were primed for action.

  “Harry, get the door,” Kate directed, leveling the Ingram.

  Before obeying, the guard checked the ammo clip in his M-16 and the 40 mm gren in the stubby launcher attached under the main barrel. Now ready, the man threw the bolts and opened the door. The curved section of hull swung down on well-greased hinges and hit the inch-deep water with a rippling splash.

  Her Ingram chattered as a millipede fell onto the ramp from above and started inside the wag. Little bastard had to have been sitting on the weather strip used to make the door airtight.

  Firing from the hip, she hosed the steps and sparks flew as the 9 mm rounds ricocheted around the yard-long bug. Then it reared to strike, pincers wildly snapping and Roberto fired his shotgun. The sawed-off double-barrel blew a hellstorm of soft lead through the doorway, and the millipede exploded into pieces, pink blood gushing from the tattered remains.

  Jumping outside into the wet sand, Kate spun fast and cursed as she saw more of the millipedes alive and moving. Another dozen had survived by being on the rubber tires!

  Unable to shoot without blowing the tires, the woman kicked the nearest bug hard with her boot. Hissing loudly, it dropped off the wheel and started for her, wiggling through the mud when the guard cut loose with his M-16, the preDark hardball ammo chewing the bug to pieces.

  But the scent of blood seemed to drive the others mad, and now millipedes dropped off the wag in a dozen places, hitting with little splashes and then starting after the Trader, some submerged and others in plain view.

  Firing a line before the insects to hold them back, the guard emptied another clip into the muties as Roberto hit the water and thundered flame at the creatures. Then the rest of the control-room crew came out the doorway and splashed into the fight, hammering the bugs in a cacophony of firepower.