by Jon Land
“Yo, boys,” Belamo chimed in. “I see two Frankensteins almost to the corner.”
Professor Ainsley hesitated no longer. He turned his attention back to the console and hit a single button set apart from the rest at arm’s length. A large red bulb began to flash. The computer screen showed a countdown beginning at fifteen in huge LCD figures. “I’ve just ordered Obie Three to self-destruct.” A strange smile crossed his lips. “A suicide mission, that’s what this has become. My God, he would understand. I know he would.”
The countdown had reached seven.
“Professor—”
Before McCracken could speak further, a large figure charged into the picture being broadcast by Obie Four. He came from the side of the picture, rushing in from behind the pair of disciples five seconds before their deaths. The pair swung, weapons ready, as the figure leveled an M203 behind the fence where Obie Three was perched. A charge thumped out with a trail of smoke. When it cleared, a large section of the picket fence was gone—along with whatever had been behind it. The LCD countdown on the computer monitor was locked at two.
“Fuck me,” Belamo moaned.
“The explosives wouldn’t have been armed until the sequence was complete,” Ainsley said distantly. “He died for nothing.”
“Uh-oh,” moaned McCracken, his eyes back on the screen.
The group in the truck watched as the same large figure that had destroyed Obie Three grew in size, charging straight toward Obie Four in its exposed position on the other side of the street.
“No!” Ainsley screamed, working his keyboard feverishly.
He succeeded in turning Obie Four around, the screen’s picture spinning with him. But suddenly the picture filled with tremors, shapes rushing past in a blur as the snakelike reconnaissance droid was grabbed and pulled upward.
A face with a twisted half-smile, straw-colored hair, and the coldest eyes McCracken had ever seen filled the screen.
“Abraham,” Wareagle said. The big Indian’s stare searched out the deadliest disciple, certain Abraham could see him as well.
The face stayed centered for an elongated moment, as if Abraham could indeed see through and beyond the screen. Then everything turned to fuzz, and the signal was lost.
“Goddammit!” Ainsley shrieked.
He propelled himself across the truck’s cab, over to the console controlling Obie Seven. Blaine caught his trembling hand before it could reach the keyboard. “Not yet, Professor.”
“Get your hand off me!”
“No. You’re playing into their hands!” he said, looking at the screen which had become staticy. “You’re playing into his hands.”
“I can’t just sit here!”
McCracken tapped the old man’s wheelchair. “Yes, you can. You’ve got to.” His eyes turned to Wareagle, who had hoisted a crossbow he had made for himself years ago out of a duffel bag stowed in the corner. “Leave this to me and the Indian.”
“I’ve got a stake in this, too,” Ainsley said more quietly. “They were like my…”
“I know. The thing is the two of us specialize in settling scores.” His eyes turned in Obie Seven’s direction. “When the time’s right, he’ll get his chance.”
“What exactly are you planning to do?”
“Give Abraham exactly what he wants.” Blaine looked at Johnny. “Us.”
Chapter 33
ABRAHAM HAD SMASHED the snakelike robot’s camera eye with his fist, then had twisted its steel frame into a monstrous knot. Still not satisfied, he proceeded to tear it apart with fingers that were steellike themselves. The ease of it amazed him. Somehow moments like these inevitably brought back memories of just how inadequate he had been before the jungle. Mere scraps of memory now, as distant from him as a normal man’s recollections of the limitations of early childhood. He turned back to Thomas and James.
“We’ve killed their toys. They’ll be coming now.” Just then, the remaining two pairs of disciples charged into the scene from opposite directions. They had been converging on the rendezvous point just as the latest explosion sounded. Abraham’s smile told them everything as they ground to a halt. In silence, the seven surviving disciples fanned out in a spread across the width of Duke of Gloucester Street.
McCracken checked his 9-mm pistols—each loaded with a fresh clip of Sal Belamo’s Splats—one last time before sliding out from the cover of the Capitol.
“You knew this was coming,” he said to Wareagle.
“I knew something was. Hanbelachia, Blainey, for both of us.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Indian, but once we draw them out, we give Obie Seven back there a ring.”
“Yes, Blainey,” Wareagle said in the tone he always used when the spirits had his other ear.
“Let’s move, Indian.”
They approached Duke of Gloucester Street the long way around, from the back of the Capitol Building. They walked side by side, steps in perfect unison. McCracken handled his pair of pistols loaded with Splats. Wareagle grasped one in his right hand, while his left held fast to a crossbow. Both had donned bulletproof vests, but neither expected them to do much good against the kind of firepower the disciples were wielding, not to mention the aim they were capable of.
“We’re almost to Duke of Gloucester Street, Professor,” Blaine said into the microphone concealed beneath the lapel of his jacket.
“Obie Seven’s ready on your signal.”
“Make sure he doesn’t roll until I give the word.”
“As you wish.”
They reached the eastern edge of Duke of Gloucester Street and stopped dead. There, spread across the street two hundred yards before them, were the seven remaining disciples; Abraham was in the very center. “Just like an old-fashioned gunfight, Indian.”
“That’s what they were hoping for, Blainey.”
“Well, let’s give it to them.” They started walking.
“How far before they start firing, Johnny?”
“Seventy-five yards.”
“We’ll walk fifty—then call for Obie Seven. He takes out four or five more of them, we clean up the rest.” Wareagle said nothing.
“Steady,” ordered Abraham, just loud enough for the three disciples flanking him on either side to hear. “No one fires until I say so.”
Several of the others shifted uneasily, and he sensed their impatience.
“We’ve got what we want,” he offered as explanation. “But we’ve got to be sure this time.”
James spoke with his eye glued to the long-range sight on his rifle. “I can hit them from here. Head shots. Neat and clean.”
“Wait,” Abraham said suddenly. “They wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t want us to respond precisely as we are. We’ve…missed something.”
“We couldn’t have. There’s nothing,” another voice shot back.
“We should open fire now!” a third insisted.
“Not until we’re sure. Not until we’ve all got shots.”
“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?” Patty Hunsecker said accusingly to Sal Belamo as he struggled for a view of what was transpiring on Duke of Gloucester Street.
“Lady, I don’t know—”
“You do! I know you do! They’re sacrificing themselves, using themselves as bait. To draw those…things out, so Ainsley’s monstrosity can finish them off.”
Belamo tilted his head toward the area beyond. “The real monstrosities are those Frankensteins out there. And MacBalls knows the key is makin’ sure they don’t get outta here.”
“He didn’t take you with him,” Patty said abruptly.
“Huh?”
“If he really thought he had a chance, he’d have taken you.”
There was a brief crackle of static before the soft echo of McCracken’s voice rose from Sal’s walkie-talkie.
“It’s show time, boys,” Blaine called. “Send the big fella in.”
“With pleasure,” Ainsley said.
The professor’s atte
mpted activation of Obie Seven, though, brought the most feared phrase possible flashing across his monitor: NOT PROCESSING.
“Yo, Professor,” Sal Belamo yelled to him, “he’s not going anywhere.”
“No,” Ainsley said, mostly to himself, as he worked the keyboard desperately, “he isn’t.”
“MacBalls!” Blaine heard Sal Belamo yell into his ear. “You guys got to pull out. The big guy ain’t ready for his walk.”
“What the fuck’s going on?”
“I can’t get him on line!” Ainsley screeched. “His programming won’t accept the sequence!”
“Get outta there, boss.”
The flurry of fire from the disciples began just as Blaine and Johnny dived toward opposite sides of Duke of Gloucester Street.
“After them!” Abraham screamed above the booming reports from their weapons.
The disciples took off in seven separate directions, certain to catch their quarries in the spread. They could smell victory now, the taste of it as welcome as blood.
They liked the taste.
McCracken and Wareagle’s only chance for survival was to separate, splinter the opposing forces, and buy themselves the time it took for Ainsley to get Obie Seven working.
Fucking thing must have blown a fuse! McCracken thought to himself, going for a little humor.
But the humor swiftly vanished as something else occurred to him. This unexpected breakdown not only forced Johnny and him into flight, it also left Patty, Sal, and Ainsley exposed back at the Capitol. If the disciples chose to concentrate their efforts toward that end, three corpses would greet Blaine…if he managed to stay alive and get back there. No, he told himself, the disciples would only be thinking in terms of Wareagle and himself for the moment. Their vision was sharp but narrow. With Blaine and Johnny in their sights now, they would sweep the rest of Williamsburg only after their two primary targets had been dispatched.
All the more reason to stay alive.
Blaine headed south briefly, hit Francis Street and swung west, keeping to the cover of buildings as best he could.
“You read me, Sal?”
“Still fucked at this end, boss.”
“Don’t break radio silence, no matter what. Let me have the first word. Talk to you soon.”
“Roger.”
Blaine kept moving. He knew the disciples would be circling in an attempt to enclose him. His two major priorities were to draw them away from the Capitol on Williamsburg’s eastern perimeter and find safe haven for himself until Ainsley got Obie Seven back on line. He moved quickly, using the buildings for cover and darting between them only after being certain none of the disciples were about. He heard their footsteps on several occasions, but was fortunate enough to be near heavy concentrations of bushes or a hefty porch that provided concealment each time.
He ended up amid a thick nest of buildings between Colonial and Botetourt streets. Plenty of places to find cover that would make the disciples spend extra time trying to locate him. He would hold off using his pistols for as long as he could, since using them would alert them to his location, and Blaine was not in the self-sacrificing mood.
McCracken stayed to the rear of the James Anderson House, moving among the seven reconstructed forges that dominated the Blacksmith Shop. His hand strayed to one of the brick forges and came away singed. The damn coals were still hot; a quick gaze inside showed Blaine hot pokers of steel, their edges glowing reddish-orange.
He was thinking about how the occupants of Williamsburg must have truly dropped everything and run, thanks to Sal Belamo, when a flash of gun metal appeared just ahead of the figure; one of the disciples about to round the corner.
Johnny Wareagle stuck to the area of Nicholson Street, heading northwest. He could feel the eyes of three of the Wakinyan searching for him and sensed none of them belonged to Abraham. This comforted him, for, above all, he knew that it was his Hanbelachia to face the most fearsome of these monsters. He had known this since they had seen each other briefly in Philadelphia. The confrontation might come here in Williamsburg, or it might come later, but it would come.
Johnny’s communicator had stayed silent since his split from McCracken back on Duke of Gloucester Street. He knew the call would come when Ainsley got his final and most impressive droid on line. He only needed to keep himself hidden from the Wakinyan until then.
Johnny passed near North England Street, hugging the rear white-frame expanse of the Peyton-Randolph House. Fields and brush lay before him in this more rustic section of Williamsburg. Set in a clearing, detached and by itself, lay a fenced-in windmill. The sailcloth wheel spun quickly in the stiff breeze. Johnny remembered how it had helped grind the corn when he was young and still living on the reservation. It looked and smelled of home, and he took this as a sign from the spirits.
Crouching low, he made a quick dash for the steep steps leading into the building the wheel was attached to. The structure supporting the windmill was propped up on a base of logs, the reconstruction perfect in all respects. Wareagle thought he might find refuge inside.
He felt the presence just as he passed through the entrance, felt it in time to dive for the floor just as the muzzle flashes erupted and bullets split the air above him.
The disciple’s angle of approach had prevented him from firing when McCracken lunged. He managed to squeeze the trigger, but Blaine had already locked a hand on the stock and shoved the M16 away. Equal to the task, the disciple had responded by shoving Blaine in the direction his momentum had already taken him, launching out with a kick. McCracken took the impact in his bent knee and felt it buckle. The leg went numb and rubbery, but he kept himself from falling. He’d learned his lesson from facing another disciple down in Rio. He could not let things be drawn out, especially not with reinforcements as close as a scream away.
Still holding tight to the rifle, McCracken faked falling. The disciple released his right hand from the grip and formed it into a fist; he would try for a killing strike to Blaine’s throat or face. McCracken was ready. He avoided the blow with a deft twist and lowering of his head. In the same motion he tore the rifle from the disciple’s remaining hand and heard it smack into the brick forge behind him. Blaine whipped one of the pistols from his belt, only to have the disciple kick it into the air, where it landed in a nest of hot coals.
The disciple reached into one of the forges for a red-hot poker, which was glowing at the tip. McCracken probed desperately behind him and found its twin, burning his hand in the process.
The disciple came in first with an overhead blow. Blaine deflected it and tried to use his poker with a backlash motion. The disciple simply ducked and brought his weapon hard into Blaine’s ribs in roundhouse fashion. McCracken lost his breath in a throaty gasp. The blow had stunned him, but he recovered his senses in time to see the disciple lunging at him, aiming the poker’s glowing tip straight for him. McCracken turned at the last instant, knocking the blow aside and ramming his own poker into the side of the disciple’s face.
Now it was his opponent who gasped. A hiss sounded as flesh burned and blackened and a bulging welt swelled across the disciple’s right cheek and jaw. But the disciple came back at him as if he hadn’t felt anything. A damaging blow was headed for Blaine’s collarbone, but he deflected it enough to turn the impact into a mere graze. He tried to retaliate, but the disciple had launched a furious flurry of blows with both the poker and his free hand. McCracken barely managed to ward him off as he was forced backward against a forge that was still burning with a white-hot coal fire. The poker slid from his hand, his injured leg giving way as he stooped to retrieve it.
Seeing the opening, the disciple reared back and launched a savage overhead strike with the poker. At the last moment, McCracken threw up both hands in an X-block that caught his opponent’s wrist between his forearms. The poker flirted with the top of his skull and, as the disciple drew it overhead once more, Blaine rammed a foot up into his groin.
The disciple’s ey
es bulged. As he doubled over, Blaine grabbed him by the bulk of his Kevlar vest and brought him forward, facefirst, toward the white-hot flames. Blaine felt his own hands paying part of the price as he jammed the disciple’s face and chest against the sizzling coals. McCracken heard the ssssssssssss and was assaulted by the sickening aroma of frying flesh and hair. He waited until it had all but subsided before releasing the pressure on the twitching frame. He regained his feet and dashed away, the scent still fresh in his nostrils.
Wareagle kicked out at blinding speed toward the source of the muzzle flashes. It was like a cartwheel—with his hands down, his legs spun around like a propeller. His feet struck the rifle square in the stock and separated it from the Wakinyan’s hands. The Wakinyan whipped out a pistol, but as Johnny lunged back to his feet he locked his hand on the wrist holding the gun before it could fire. The disciple was at least eight inches shorter than Johnny, but he looked up into the Indian’s eyes and smiled at him. The test of strength was going his way. The gun was coming back up almost in line with Johnny’s face, the disciple’s finger still on the trigger. Their free arms had locked, and they were grappling with each other like wrestlers.
The Wakinyan smiled again. He was winning.
Because Johnny wanted him to.
The wind-driven grinding stones on the Wakinyan’s right side squeezed against each other like a huge mouthful of chomping teeth. The process was continuous: lower, grind, separate, rise…lower, grind, separate, rise…
Johnny knew the disciple would wait until his shot was sure, wait until Johnny had a long moment to contemplate his own death. Wareagle let that moment start with his eyes staring down the pistol’s bore for a microsecond. Then he jerked the disciple’s gun hand across his body, back and to the side. He timed the move for the exact moment the stones were separated enough to allow for the hand and arm to pass between them, in the instant before they began to lower again. Flesh tore, and Wareagle’s ears were burned by the sound of bones being ground to pulp. The Wakinyan’s eyes bulged in agony. Wareagle’s free hand clamped down over his mouth to muffle his screams, then drew the head toward him before jamming it backward against the grinding mechanism.