Apocalypse Unborn

by James Axler

  Behind them on the steps, the last man through the companionway slammed and bolted the hatch.

  The taua hurled their bodies against it, trying to batter it down.

  Not a chance.

  The surviving crew and passengers started yelling, laughing and backslapping, congratulating one another on the slaughter of slaughters and their nimble, timely escape.

  Their celebration was short-lived, silenced by the groan and shriek of metal directly above them.

  The taua were pulling up the deck plates.

  Chapter Seven

  Creatures of nightmare cleared the gunwhales in prodigious, whistling bounds, their pale bellies underlit by the oil lamps’ glow.

  Though Doc was accustomed to facing hellish nightmares come to life, this one was in a league all its own—a combination of the frenzied, chaotic attack, the volume of randomly hurtling bodies, and the proximity of sudden, violent death. Though sometimes Theophilus Algernon Tanner wished with all his soul that he was dead, wished he was one with his wife and children in the numbness of Eternity, oddly enough such thoughts never popped into his head in the heat of battle.

  In combat, a much deeper, much more primitive urge took control of his lanky frame. Like a malarial fever, it raged in his brain. The man of science and philosophy, the man of reason, of history, of sentiment, seized the opportunity to flat-out retaliate. Every wrong done him by a cruel fate, he repaid in kind, and a hundredfold. He did this with his remarkably perfect teeth bared, his haggard face set in stone.

  Left foot back, bracing himself with his ebony swordstick, he fired the LeMat one-handed, duelist style, adding its sonorous booms, blinding flash and jetting plumes of smoke to the melee. As the pistol design was single action, he had to recock it for each shot. The recoil wave lifted the muzzle of the heavy handblaster skyward, and as it dropped to horizontal he used the momentum of the fall to thumb back the hammer. Out of necessity, the melding of man and his device, the rhythm of his shooting was fluid, easy and relaxed. Unlike the mutie hunters on either side of him—the black man and his white-painted partner—who fired their M-16s full-auto, sweeping the gunwhales with 5.56 mm tumblers, Doc had an extra second or two to choose his next target.

  The LeMat’s .44-caliber lead balls caught taua in midair, caught them as they landed, caught them square in head, throat and center chest. Though the weapon he fired was as old as he was, its knockdown power had not diminished over the years. His targets dropped to the deck, some from heights of fifteen feet or more, legs quivering in the throes of death. Only when he had emptied the nine chambers in the cylinder did he cock the .63-caliber undergun.

  The LeMat’s shotgun barrel was designed for close-range, last-resort mayhem. Short in length, with an un-choked bore, its shot load fanned out as soon as it exited the muzzle. In this case, what fanned out were the small bits and pieces of metal Doc had scrounged up in his hellscape travels. There was nothing blue about these “whistlers.” They were the kind of stuff you might find in the bottom of a machine shop trash can. He had packed steel, brass and copper nuggets and shards into the muzzle-loader’s single chamber, along with a hefty dose of Deathlands’ best homegrown black-powder and enough cotton wadding to hold the charge in place.

  Doc let a pair of tauas get within five yards of him, one slightly behind and to the right of the other, before he cut loose with the stubby scattergun barrel. He didn’t aim for one or the other, but between them. Three feet of flame belched forth, and the weapon bucked wildly against the tightest grip he could muster. The shot spread at a fifteen-foot range, shoulder to shoulder, across both bodies. The impact knocked the taua backward, hard onto their haunches. Blood sheeted down their chests from gaping throat wounds, but they died attacking each other, either confused by the terrible pain or excited by the spilled gore.

  Even though Doc had a pair of spare .44-caliber cylinders in the pockets of his frock coat, the LeMat was a clumsy, time-consuming and dangerous weapon to reload in pitched, near-hand-to-hand combat. Attending to the scattergun barrel was out of the question. Accordingly, Doc was one of the first fighters on the deck to holster his sidearm and draw cold steel.

  With a flourish, he pulled the rapier blade from its ebony sheath. Holding the swordstick’s scabbard in his left hand for balance, he lunged, meeting an onrushing taua’s charge. His perfectly timed thrust slid over the creature’s blocking wrist and the double-edged point probed six inches into the middle of its chest, just below its breastbone. In his trained hand, the blade had a tension, a presence, a life that was in part due to its external shape, to the blows that had forged it, in part to the alignment of its very molecules. The rapier yearned to penetrate flesh, and to penetrate it to the hilt.

  Not this time.

  As Doc drew back the flexible sword, with lightning back-and-forth twists of the wrist, he made the steel serpent’s tongue cut a figure eight through heart and lungs.

  Or at least where he assumed were the creature’s heart and lungs. The purpose of breastbone being universal, the same for every species, norm or mutie: to protect the vitals at the body’s core. His figure eight had the desired effect, instantly reducing a live enemy to a heap of shuddering flesh.

  He dealt with a half-dozen attackers in a similar manner, and in short order, sending them stumbling backward, their innards severed, over the growing pile of corpses.

  As the taua pressed harder and harder, throwing themselves at their intended victims, Doc had to abandon his customary finesse with the long blade. He simply met the creatures as they launched themselves at him, letting their body weight fall on his upraised swordpoint, burying it. It was like spearing a cooked jacket potato with a steak knife. Doc pivoted on his back foot, dropping the swordpoint as the body swept past, and the blade slipped out. All in a single motion.

  And back for more.

  The Victorian swordsman remained clear-headed, fully aware of his surroundings, even while staring into the teeth of hell. It was as if he was looking down on himself from one of the yardarms, a spectator in his own fight for life. It didn’t escape his notice that the mutie hunters kneeling beside him were taking care of his business as well as their own. The kill zones of their assault rifles overlapped at the rail, and, in so doing, took out about half of the taua he otherwise would have faced, leaving him to do battle with onesies and twosies, as opposed to threesies and foursies.

  Why they were looking after his well-being, he had no inkling. Elsewhere along the firing line it was every man for himself. Some were doing better than others. As Doc fought on, he saw passenger after passenger yanked over the side by the attackers, to certain death.

  After the first islander was torn apart by the taua, the captain called for a retreat.

  Doc felt strong hands gripping his elbows and biceps. Human hands, as luck would have it. Before he could shrug them off, the mutie hunters had turned him by main force and were driving him, stiff-legged, toward the for’c’sle’s entrance.

  “Wait!” he protested, unwilling to leave the battlefield without his companions. “By the three Kennedys, wait!”

  “No time,” the black man told him. Without another word, they bum-rushed him down the narrow flight of steps and into the galley.

  Doc shook off their grip, his dignity ruffled. Bloody sword in hand, he watched the stairs, making sure that Ryan, Krysty, Mildred, Jak and J.B. made it safely down.

  Only when they had did he turn to register a complaint about the rough handling, but the surviving passengers and crew started cheering their victory and he couldn’t make himself heard over the noise.

  The shriek of deck rivets coming loose put an end to the hooting and yeehawing. The rows of fasteners were all that secured the iron plates overhead. Many of the flush-mounted rivets had been jarred and vibrated up from their sockets by the taua’s initial, hull-pounding onslaught. Which gave the attackers sucker-purchase along the edges of the tight-fitting plates.

  A hundred blasters aimed point-blank at wid
ening gaps in the creaking ceiling.

  “No!” the islander captain howled at the passengers. “Put your blasters away! I don’t want any blasterfire from you belowdecks! You’ll end up chilling all of us with the ricochets and misses. Leave the shooting to my crew. They know what they’re doing. If the taua get in here, use your blades on them!”

  Doc would have substituted “when” for the captain’s conditional “if.” The old man had little doubt that given their vast numbers, their physical strength and determination, and the ship’s weakened armor, the creatures were going to be among them shortly.

  When they broke through, there were five or six simultaneous breaches and not in the obvious places, where the plates were visibly being rocked up and down. The taua were devilishly clever. Using the pry bars, chisels, shovel blades they had found on the deck, they had carefully levered loose entire rows of rivets, freeing some of the plates on all sides, plates that came away cleanly and suddenly. Without warning, pale bodies dropped through the ceiling, landing heavily on the tables and floor, effectively dividing the human fighters.

  Despite the captain’s order, blasterfire exploded from all sides, with disastrous consequences to both taua and the ship’s defenders. Wild shots and through-and-throughs hit the galley’s iron walls, sparking, then zipping through the crowd. Men and taua dropped as if their strings had been cut.

  The black mutie hunter hurled his full weight onto Doc’s back, driving him to his knees and out of the line of fire.

  The islander crew turned on the frantic shooters with the steel-shod butts of their AKs, battering them into submission.

  “Pull back!” Eng shouted, waving for everyone to retreat behind the for’c’sle’s bulkhead door.

  It was easier said than done because more taua kept pouring through the gaps in the plating. The galley’s low ceiling restricted their jumping, otherwise the battle belowdecks would have been one-sided and short.

  The black mutie hunter and his comrade stepped between Doc and three pairs of grasping sucker hands. The old man couldn’t bring his sword into play—there wasn’t room overhead to swing it or space between the two big men to drive home a thrust.

  His tall topknot mashing against the ceiling, the black man whipped a knife back and forth. Not just any knife. It was a SOG Desert Dagger. Its six-and-a-quarter-inch, 440A stainless, double-edged blade had a blood gutter, a steel pommel and Kraton grips. The white-painted man had an even bigger knife from the same manufacturer, a Tigershark model. Its heavy, nine-inch blade was designed for chopping and hacking. As with the pair’s mint-condition long and handblasters, Doc knew it was not run-of-the-mill mutie hunter armament. In the shortlist of the most lusted after predark edged treasures, their stabbers were right up there.

  As quick as the taua were, the mutie hunters were quicker. To Doc it seemed the black man no more than twitched his right arm, and the belly of the beast before him suddenly came unzipped from crotch to breastbone. His partner had a much heavier touch. As guts flopped steaming to the floor, he lopped off first one, then the other sucker hand reaching for his chest. The third strike across the front of the throat all but decapitated the attacking creature, and slung its thick blood across the tabletops.

  The black man turned and pushed Doc along the wall, toward the passenger cabin. “Move!” he said. As he spoke, another taua darted in and seized hold of the back of his huge bare arm.

  Doc was almost nose to nose with him at that instant. He could see the astonished pain in the big man’s eyes.

  With a single, chopping blow, the white mutie hunter severed the offending hand at the wrist, leaving it hanging by its suckers from his friend’s bicep. His second blow was to the heart, driving the long blade all the way through the creature’s torso.

  Ripping the knife free, he shoved both his partner and Doc, hurrying them around the galley’s walls. Ahead of them, the crew wielded boat hooks like spears, jabbing to hold the taua back while the passengers slipped through the for’c’sle door.

  Inside the cabin, among the other survivors, Doc was relieved to see his companions alive and unhurt. When the last islander stepped inside the doorway, the crew slammed shut the iron hatch and dogged it.

  Doc could hear the thump, thump, thump of taua throwing themselves at the far side of the barrier. And the even heavier thuds as more of the creatures dropped feet-first into the galley.

  “Don’t worry, they can’t get into this cabin,” the captain assured everyone. “The deck above us is protected by the bow’s superstructure, and that bulkhead is three inches thick.”

  “What do we do now?” one of mercies said.

  “We sit and wait until they decide to move on,” Eng told him. “See to your wounds and try to get some rest.”

  The black mutie hunter stared at the taua hand still affixed to the back of his arm. He took hold of the stump and pulled. His ebony skin came with it, stretching from the ends of the sucker fingers. “Oh, shit…” he said.

  “Perhaps I can be of assistance?” Doc said. “I have had some rudimentary medical training.”

  “Be my guest,” the man said.

  As best he could, Doc examined the join of fingertips to human flesh, then he drew back. “I’m going to have to cut the hand away to see how the fingers are attached to you,” he said. “May I borrow your knife?”

  The mutie hunter handed Doc his Desert Dagger. With great care, the old man filleted flesh from bone, removing all but the skin of the taua’s fingertips. With the clammy hand out of the way, he could see the edges of the small, circular wounds more closely.

  “It appears the suckers are lined with teeth,” he said. “Like the suckers of a squid or an octopus. I’m going to have to remove them from your flesh or the wounds will become infected.”

  “So do it,” the black man said.

  Doc sterilized the knife point in an oil lamp flame, then proceeded to work with the tip of the blade, prying out the teeth one by one. They were embedded so deep that if simply torn free, they would have left craters in the muscle. The mutie hunter endured the procedure in stoic silence. After Doc popped out the last fang he said, “Let the wounds bleed a little, then wash them with joy juice. The alcohol will sterilize them.”

  The man looked up and thanked him.

  As Doc passed back the knife, handle first, he said, “For some reason, you two gentlemen seem to have taken responsibility for my safety. Concern for the welfare of strangers is rare in the hellscape. And as such it is always suspect. I do not require your protection. I can defend myself, I assure you. I am neither enfeebled nor addle-witted.”

  “No one said you were,” the black man responded.

  “Wouldn’t you have done the same for one of us, if the situation were reversed?” the white-painted mutie hunter asked.

  “No,” was Doc’s succinct reply.

  “Forget ulterior motives,” the black man said. “We don’t have any. This is straight business. We’re looking for another fighter, an ally to help us deal with what lies ahead, at the end of the voyage. Three blackhearts always make out better than two…”

  “Thank you very much, but I prefer to fight alone.”

  “We have more in common than you can even imagine,” the other mutie hunter said.

  “Somehow I very much doubt that,” Doc said, amused at the thought. “Now if you will excuse me, I think I will take a bit of a nap. I did not sleep well last night.”

  Doc located his bunk, climbed into it and turned his back to the cabin. He regretted there was no water to wash up with. He had to let the taua blood dry to a powdery crust on his hands, face and hair before he could brush it off.

  As it dried, it itched like blazes.

  Lying there on the hard pallet, Doc considered how far the mutie hunters had gone to win his allegiance—if that’s what they were really up to. Twice they had dragged him out of danger like a pair of overprotective mother hens. Anyone with eyes could see he was not a man of substance, even by Deathlands�
� miserable standards. Doc had nothing of value for the mutie hunters to steal, certainly nothing to compare with the weapons they already owned. Nor were the men cannies in disguise, looking for a bit of well-aged long pork. They’d obviously passed their sputum tests with flying colors.

  In truth, Doc was more concerned about the downside to personal entanglement with strangers than any physical threat from his new acquaintances. His goal, and that of the other companions, was to make no ripples on the southerly voyage, to arouse no interest or suspicion. So when it came time to vanish from the passenger ranks altogether, no one would notice. Until it was too late to do anything about it.

  Doc closed his eyes and in familiar stages, mental stepping-stones, withdrew into himself, to a dark, warm place he had created in his imagination. A refuge of memory where his dead wife and children still lived, where he could see their sweet faces, hear their voices and the sounds of their laughter. After a few minutes of slow, deep breathing, he dozed off.

  Sometime later, though how much later he couldn’t tell, he was nudged from a dreamless, exhausted sleep by the black mutie hunter.

  “We’re under way again, mercie,” the man told him.

  Sure enough, Doc could hear the hiss of the hull slicing through the water, and the wind singing in the rigging. Sails that had been left unfurled and slack were now filled with a freshening breeze.

  There were no sounds coming from the galley next door.

  Captain Eng let the ship sail on without a helmsman for a long time before he finally ordered the bulkhead door opened a crack.

  The galley beyond, though free of invaders, was a ruin. Everything not bolted down had been cast aside and smashed. The taua had overturned the food trays, it appeared without eating any; they had mashed and smeared most of the fried fish into the ceiling and walls. Scattered over the tables and floor were peaked, circular mounds of what looked like gray-green softy-serve.