Bad Timing

by Rebecca Levene

  The other mutant chewed on an unlit cigar. "Fair enough." After a moment, he sparked up a match, got the end of the cigar glowing a cherry red, then threw the match away behind him.

  Unseen by him, or Johnny, the little stick of wood let out a wisp of smoke as it landed on a small patch of dry grass. After a moment, the wisp thickened into a tendril. The tiny red dot of heat at its heart fed on the fuel beneath it, and grew.

  Johnny and One-Eyed Jack walked on, oblivious. They both watched in silence as a strange pink light streaked through the sky above them and disappeared. Johnny guessed that it might have been a vast flock of flamingos passing overhead. After several more minutes, Jack said, "I expect what you've seen with your two eyes is that I've got no regard for anyone but myself."

  Johnny glanced sideways at him. The other mutant wore a slight smile, more self-deprecating than Johnny would have expected. "Yep," he said.

  One-Eyed Jack's smile twisted. "Well, you're right. I spent forty years looking out for other people, and all it got me was a bunch of scars and a nice deep grave for my wife and child. Now I make sure there's no one in my life I wouldn't happily see out of it in a second."

  Johnny suddenly found that he couldn't meet the other man's eye. This matched too closely Johnny's own thoughts earlier in the day. "I'm not asking for your friendship," Johnny finally said to him. "I'm asking for your loyalty. I want to know that when I turn my back on you, I won't end up with a knife sticking out of it."

  "I can promise you that," One-Eyed Jack said, his craggy face revealing little about his thoughts.

  "But more than that," Johnny said, "I want to trust you to guard my back, to make sure no other son of a bitch goes sticking a knife in it either."

  One-Eyed Jack smiled slightly. "People in this group seem more likely to saint you than knife you."

  "Still..." Johnny said.

  "You have my word," Jack replied. "We're a team, here. We'll hang together or hang apart."

  Johnny nodded. "That's about the length of it."

  The other man looked off into the distance. "Just don't ask me to die for you," he said. "That I won't do."

  "Don't worry," Johnny told him. "I'm through asking people to do that."

  "Then we're-" the other mutant began.

  And then they both smelled it. The faint, wood-smoke odour of burning carried on the breeze from somewhere behind them.

  As one, they spun to face the source of the scent. To their left, the other Strontium Dogs were doing the same.

  So they all got the bad news at once. Behind them, stretching to left and right as far as the eye could see, was a great wall of fire.

  It was heading straight towards them.

  10 / STAMPEDE

  No one had to give the order to run. They just turned and fled. In the brief seconds it took them to make even this decision, the fire leapt nearer, loudly spitting sparks as it gobbled up the bone-dry vegetation.

  It wasn't, Johnny realised immediately, moving at the speed of life on this planet. It was moving at the pace of a perfectly ordinary brush fire.

  Which was still far too fast.

  With his rangy legs and superior strength, Johnny had managed to sprint ahead of most of the rest of the mutants, who had instinctively clustered together in the face of this new threat. But Johnny knew instantly that even he didn't have a hope in hell of outrunning the fire. The ground was just too dry. And the sky was an empty, perfect blue, untroubled by a single wisp of cloud, offering no distant hope of rain. All Johnny could hope to do was live a few seconds longer than his fellows.

  In the far distance, torturing him with a promise to save him that it couldn't keep, was a vast swathe of water.

  There was no way they would reach it in time. Already, the flames were roaring loudly behind him, the first sensation of heat licking against his back. He heard the crackle of a huge stand of trees being consumed by the voracious fire.

  Then he heard something else. He didn't know what it was at first, this pounding that shook the earth and vibrated up through his stomach and into his ears. He assumed it must be some other effect of the inferno behind them. But then he heard another noise, a high-pitched, terrified screech.

  He realised instantly what it was. A herd of animals, fleeing the fire, stampeding in panic away from the flames. Dumb animals, obviously, or they would have realised that the flames had no chance of outpacing them. They would be passing Johnny in a few seconds.

  If he was lucky, the animals would run around him, seeing him as a stationary object in their path no different from a tree. If he was unlucky, he would be trampled beneath their feet. Which, he supposed, might be preferable to burning alive.

  Except that alive was very much how he intended to stay. And he'd suddenly had an idea about how he might achieve this. It wasn't a very good idea, but it was the only one he had.

  Before he had a chance to think better of it, he spun round to face the others, pulling a net grenade from his jacket all in the same motion. For a moment, all he could look at was the vast wall of flame looming less than two hundred metres behind them. It was unstoppable, monstrous, and strangely beautiful. There was something hypnotic about it, about the way it writhed and twisted as the yellows and oranges grew and mingled within it. It seemed somehow alive. The smell of burning wood it gave off was like the primeval musk of an ancient predator.

  With an effort of will Johnny tore his eyes away from it. As soon as he did, he was confronted by the panicked faces of his companions hurtling towards him. They were sweat-soaked and streaked with soot. Middenface was in the lead, but had slowed down when he saw Johnny stop. As a consequence, the rest had bunched up behind him, so close they were in danger of tripping over each other. It looked like a human car wreck in the making.

  Good.

  The instant they were in range, Johnny drew back his arm and flung the net grenade against Middenface.

  He saw his partner's astonished, hurt face for an instant - unable to believe that Johnny had betrayed him in this way. Then the grenade detonated, and a fine wire mesh shot out, encasing all Johnny's fellow mutants in a silvery cage. A moment later it tightened, drawing them into a tight ball of humanity.

  The hoof beats of the approaching beasts were louder than the crackle of the fire, physically shaking the ground and Johnny with it. He estimated that he had less than a second left.

  In that second, he grabbed the mono-fibre rope that draped from one end of the net, hurriedly looped the far end into a lassoo - nearly dropping it as his fingers fumbled with haste - then turned and stared at the approaching herd of beasts.

  There were so many of them that their speed didn't render them fully invisible. He could see them spreading over the scrubland in front of the fire like a grey stain. A grey stain that was very nearly upon them.

  More strongly than he ever had before in his life, Johnny forced alpha rays from his eyes, pushing them at these creatures, desperately trying to make a connection with one of them, with whichever one would reach them first.

  He almost felt it, a flicker of consciousness, of an intelligence far weaker than his own. It started to slip from him and - with a mental effort of will harder than any physical exertion - he grabbed on to it and held tight.

  There it was. He knew the creature totally now. Its needs: food, water, safety from predators. Its desires: to mate, to protect its young, to survive to see another winter. He saw it: a great grey scaly thing, five times bigger than an elephant and twenty times as strange. Its mouth was surrounded by a double ring of flailing tentacles and it moved forward with a strange undulating motion, propelled by four pairs of clawed legs.

  He saw it. And he knew exactly where it was. Johnny knew that he had to time this to perfection, that failure would mean death not just for him but for all his companions. Heart thumping, he held the noose in his hands and, as the creature surged towards him, flung it towards its neck.

  All he could do then was hang on to the rope and hope. For a mome
nt, he thought that he'd missed. The noose of the rope seemed to snag over one of the creatures tentacles. Then, mercifully, the creature's forward momentum combined with the weight of the Strontium Dogs netted on the end of the rope to pull it down over the creature's neck.

  As soon as it had settled, the noose tightened, snapping the rope taut and flinging the net bundle behind it into the air. Johnny clung frantically to the edge of the net. Some of the people trapped within were screaming. As Johnny's fingers dug into the mesh, trying to find purchase, he felt one press into something soft and fleshy, and there was another scream, this one more urgent. Johnny hastily repositioned his hand. He knew that the next few seconds would be crucial. He had calculated that, at the speed the creature was travelling, the net and its inhabitants would remain airborne. If he was wrong and the net simply scraped along the ground behind the great grey behemoth then none of them would survive this journey.

  Not that Johnny was sure he could survive it anyway. Unlike those inside the net he wasn't securely fastened. He'd found all the purchase he could, but the air was slicing past him harder than a force twelve hurricane, whipping his hair into a frenzy, freezing the skin on his face, and constantly, relentlessly, trying to tear his grip away from the net.

  He tried to press down into the surface of the net, to present as small a surface area as possible to the lethal gale. He almost thought he'd succeeded, until the creature dragging them in its wake suddenly altered its stride, maybe trying to leap some obstacle in its path. The creature's head jerked upward and the ball of netting which was attached to it jumped up in turn.

  It was so fast, Johnny had no time to react. Both his feet were flung upwards, and the force of the motion jerked his left hand loose from the netting.

  Now five fingers were all that were holding him on to life. His body whisked out behind his hand like a pennant flapping in the breeze. He couldn't see anything, his eyes filled with tears from the stinging wind. He struggled with all his strength to hold on, but he knew that he was losing his grip. His little finger was the first to let go, then his middle finger tore lose from its hold.

  Now only three fingers were holding on, and soon he knew it would be two. He blinked his eyes, wanting at least to see the end when it came. And as he did, he realised that the grey-blue blur in front of him wasn't caused by the moisture in his eyes. It was a real body of water, the lake that he'd seen in the foothills of the mountains.

  He realised that the creature was slowing, as he and the net he rode on began to overtake the great beast, flying serenely over the waving tentacles of its mouth. For a moment, he found himself looking directly into its small, unthinking eyes. In the moment of freedom he had before the rope snapped taught in front of the creature, Johnny somehow dragged his free hand to his side, drew his blaster, called for a number four cartridge, and shot through the rope tying him and the other Strontium Dogs to the creature's neck.

  Freed of its binding, the ball of netting sailed out across the ground in front of them. It passed over the near lake shore and kept on going, over the gentle breakers, over the deep blue water at its centre, then gradually slowing, gradually falling until it finally plummeted into the water at the lake's far side.

  As they struck the water, Johnny fumbled with the release catch of the netting, setting his fellow mutants free to sink or swim. Then the impact slammed into him like a fist, knocking the breath from his lungs and turning everything temporarily black.

  A few seconds later, Johnny felt consciousness returning in slow, painful throbs. Then he felt it ebbing away again, floating on the sea of cool liquid that was pouring into his mouth, down his throat and straight into his lungs.

  With a huge effort, he forced himself awake, coughing up the water that had nearly killed him. He tried to breathe in to replace it, but realised that there was no air to breathe. He was surrounded by water. He was underneath it. He opened his eyes, but all he could see around him was dark blue flecked with white bubbles. He flailed in useless, instinctive panic for a moment, trying to get the surface. Trouble was, he had no idea what direction the surface was in.

  He had to stop moving, though every instinct he had was telling him to move, to do anything to find air. For one brief moment he forced his desperate body to hold still. And in that moment, he watched the bubbles which were still filling the water around him. He saw them sailing downward, sinking into the blue depths beneath him. But of course, they weren't sinking, they were rising. He was the one who was facing downward.

  Light-headed with relief and lack of oxygen, he flicked himself over then thrust towards the surface. A few seconds later, he broke through. His upturned face was bathed in the red glow of the setting sun as he gasped air into his lungs. Beside him, he could hear others doing the same.

  As soon as he'd recovered, he swam to the shore, only a hundred metres or so away, then collapsed backwards on the sand, too exhausted to do anything else.

  After a few moments, he forced his aching muscles to push him into a sitting position. His head spun for a moment, and the world lurched crazily. When it had settled back into something like an even keel, he looked around him. The other mutants were now sharing the small beach with him. All but Red were still lying slumped where they had first pulled themselves out of the water. She had managed to pull herself into a sitting position and had started to wring the water out of her red hair.

  Johnny did a quick body count. Astonishingly, everyone seemed to have survived the journey. He looked around some more, scanning the scenery. If it hadn't been for the untidy bodies littering the beach, he decided, it would actually have been a perfect scene, like the kind of thing people sent each other from holiday, to show what a great place they'd found, and didn't the person who'd got it wish they were there too.

  The sun was setting over the far shore of the lake. As it touched the water, it was as if a dye leeched out of it and stained the surface a deep red. The fire had already burned itself out against the water's edge, and the great herd of creatures with which they had travelled was silhouetted in black against the falling sun. In the opposite direction, the mountains were looking aloof and mysterious, shadows already creeping up their lower slopes, their peaks muffled in dense black clouds.

  Red caught his eye. "You're a crazy son of a bitch, you know that?"

  Johnny laughed, not just at her words, but with the mad joy of relief.

  After a moment, Red joined in. The sound echoed round the beach, joining with the merry chuckle of the waves against the shore.

  Then O'Blarney attacked them.

  11 / BAD BOY BLUES

  The first sign of the attack was a laser cannon blast that missed Middenface's head by only a couple of centimetres. It barrelled into the ground with a fierce electronic whine, kicking up a violent spray of sand and debris.

  Middenface leapt back with a shout. Johnny could see blood flowing from cuts on his face and arms where the shrapnel from the blast had caught him. Sluggish with exhaustion, the rest of the Strontium Dogs were slow to react. Most of them hadn't even drawn their weapons when the second blast hit. It was aimed at One-Eyed Jack this time, but he had already started rolling before it struck. Forewarned by his future-living eye, Johnny guessed. Still, the grizzled veteran was nearly buried under the geyser of sand thrown up by the cannon hit.

  That second blast had allowed Johnny to draw a bead on the source of the attack. Johnny reckoned O'Blarney - if it was him, and he was damn sure it was - was hiding in a jagged stack of black rocks a eighty metres to their left. As Johnny scanned them with his keen eyes, he saw a small bright flash from somewhere towards their base. He'd flung himself aside before he even registered that it was another shot firing off. The blast hit a second later, right where his head had been.

  Johnny didn't stop to celebrate his near-miss. As he rolled, he flung his beam polariser into the air to absorb the energy of a laser blast which O'Blarney had sent his way. As the polariser worked its magic, drawing O'Blarney's laser beam
from Johnny to itself, he took aim on the rocks, shouted out "Number three cartridge" and sent an explosive round straight down O'Blarney's throat.

  The explosion blasted apart the rocks the robot had been hiding behind, revealing him fully to the Strontium Dogs. O'Blarney himself seemed unharmed, his three metre-tall burnished steel figure glowing redly in the setting sun. Johnny could have sworn he saw the snecker smile mockingly at them.

  The rest of the party had finally woken up enough to act like professional fighters. They dived for cover left and right, all now blasting away at the revealed figure of their enemy. Only Red held her fire. Her antique weapon, which shot lethal bundles of monofilament wires, was more use at close range. She was using the cover provided by the other's fire to circle towards the rocks, trying to outflank O'Blarney. Johnny could see Min Qi Man - who as far as Johnny knew carried no weapon except his swords - perform the same manoeuvre on the lake side. The lithe mutant slipped gently into the water, and began to swim towards O'Blarney, leaving barely a ripple in his wake.

  O'Blarney was a standing target. Every shot they fired hit him. The air around him looked like a firework display.

  Trouble was, O'Blarney himself remained completely unscathed. In fact, he was walking towards them, and now Johnny could definitely hear that he was laughing. "Would you believe it?" the robot shouted out, his mechanical amplified voice audible even over the deafening roar of blaster fire. "You don't see a Strontium Dog for a month, then ten come along at once."

  He was near enough now for Johnny to make out the details of his design. It was clear that he'd been created by people with only one thought in mind, and that thought wasn't a pleasant one. His arms bristled with integrated weaponry. Even his feet seemed to house rocket launchers. His hands were a collection of spikes and blades and pincers. His face, strangely, was strikingly handsome. Sitting on that body it seemed like a bad joke, like the cartoon smile that warship pilots sometimes painted on their vessels.