Desert Kings

by James Axler

  “Still here?” a sec woman demanded scornfully from on top of the wall. “Then try this, fucker!” Lighting a fuse, she threw down a pipebomb and stepped back. A few seconds later there came a loud explosion from the other side, and then ringing silence.

  “Well?” a big man asked, holding a sawed-off shotgun in both hands.

  The sec woman looked down and grinned. “He got the message, Chief!” She chuckled triumphantly. “The howler is moving back to the ruins.”

  “Fair enough. All right, ease off the cannon,” the sec chief commanded, letting down the two hammers on his blaster before sliding it into a holster at his side. There was also a BAR strapped across his back, and a large knife tucked into his left boot. His face was heavily scarred, the overlapping patterns almost obscuring some sort of a blue tattoo on his throat.

  Only a few yards away from the gate, Franklin saw a sandbag nest filled with sec men holding blasters and Molotov cocktails. Aiming at the gate was a large muzzle-loading cannon, a stiff fuse jutting from the end like questing antennae.

  “You heard the chief,” a plump blond woman said, lowering her torch. “At ease, ya bastards. The howler got one look at Betsy here and pissed itself!”

  There came a scattering of laughter from the armed guards and they slung the BAR longblasters over their shoulders, the burning rags tied around the neck of the Molotovs yanked loose and dropped into a plastic bucket full of water to hiss into extinction. Barely visible behind the sandbags was a pyramid of wrought-iron cannonballs, along with several lumpy cloth bags.

  Franklin identified canister rounds. During the Civil War, such items were made of thin sheets of tin and filled with hundreds of musket balls. But these homemade versions probably contained only small bits of junk, broken glass, bent nails, busted pieces of pottery, anything the ville couldn’t readily use. But fired from the maw of a black-powder cannon and the barrage of debris became a shotgun blast of devastating potential over a short distance.

  Most likely about six feet past the open gate, the cyborg guesstimated. He didn’t know if the hammering could have slain a howler, but it would have shredded anything else, and at the very least, the sheer force of the multiple impacts would have thrown the mutie back outside again so the gate could be closed. Clever. Then the cyborg did a double-take at the sight of two of the men carrying canvas bags slung over their shoulders, the sides decorated with a large red cross. What the hell was going on in the ville?

  “Now, as for you,” the chief sec man said, crossing his arms and glowering downward. “Can’t say you’ve earned a lot of friends here, rist, bringing a fragging grabber down our throats.”

  Rist…tourist? Sprawling on the ground, Franklin pretended to pant from exhaustion. Yes, of course, the genesis of the word was obvious: tourist. Tucson had once been a vacation city, but after skydark, outsiders would have been extremely unwelcome, and the word became slang for a nonresident. However, this was when the cyborg noticed just how many sec men were standing near the gate, their hands full of blasters, Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs and torches. That was disturbing. TITAN did not have the secret of force fields like Coldfire, and there was enough weaponry here to dispatch him without much effort on their part.

  “I…had no choice,” Franklin started, trying to shift uneasily under the stern gaze. “I was…” Don’t say compelled, idiot! Small words, always use small words! “My dreams forced me here.”

  “Your dreams,” the sec chief said slowly, as if testing the words for a hidden trap. The fellow didn’t look crazy, but the sec boss had been fooled before.

  “I’m here to find a man called Silver,” Franklin explained, slowly rising to his feet. “I had a dre—A friend of his is in terrible danger and needs help.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m Chief Stirling,” the big man declared. “Steve Stirling. Been told that’s a kind of silver.” The sec boss kept a hand near his double-barrel blaster. “What’s the name of this friend of mine?”

  Dusting off his clothing, Franklin shook his head. “I don’t know his name for sure,” the TITAN operative lied. “But it’s got something to do with the rain.”

  “Rain?” Stirling laughed.

  “Yes. He is tall, very tall, with black hair and only one eye. Carries a curved knife like nothing I have ever seen before.”

  A hush fell over the crowd of sec men and suddenly not one of the blasters was pointed at Franklin anymore.

  “Nuking hell, that sounds like Ryan,” Stirling whispered. “Not rain, you feeb, Ryan!”

  “And he’s in trouble?” a barrel-chested sec man demanded, advancing a step. “Where is he? Talk fast, rist!”

  “I do not know where,” Franklin said, dramatically gazing into the sky. “When I sleep, there are dreams and I see distant faces, events, wars, births…they mostly come true…”

  A sec woman gave a low whistle.

  “So you’re a doomie?” Stirling demanded.

  “No!” Franklin denied hastily. “I’m no mutie! I’m a norm! Ain’t nothing like that thing outside!”

  Moving his hand off the blaster, Stirling snorted. “Blind Norad, there ain’t nothing like a howler this side of hell, and we got lots of folks in here with a little mutie blood in ’em. So don’t worry about that. The baron has never hung a rist for being different. What’s your handle?”

  “Adams, Eric Adams. And I ain’t no doomie!”

  “Sure, sure,” Stirling said soothingly. “You just have dreams sometimes and they come true. Hey, no biggie, right? Everybody dreams.” The chief sec man had an idea what was going on here, but if this Adams really was a doomie, then he needed to be handled as gently as a newborn colt. Doomies were incredibly rare, and even more valuable. Advance warning of a drought, or acid rain or mutie attack could save the whole fragging ville. Of course, there were folks who sometimes only pretended to be doomies to try to get food and shine from the baron. But the cure for that was easy: slit the tendons so the liar couldn’t run, then toss him naked to the next stickie that happened by the ville.

  “Sounds like nuke shit to me, sir,” Lieutenant Edward Rogan muttered in a deep growl. In his grip was a shiny blue Webley .44 revolver, and a machete hung under his left arm in a leather shoulder holster. The brass was loaded with black powder now, but worked as good as ever.

  Advancing a step, the colossal lieutenant nearly made Stirling look small. The barrel-chested giant had countless small scars on his face until it seemed barely human. A gold ring dangled from his left ear, and he walked with a pronounced limp.

  Turning, Franklin looked directly at the much larger man. “The river was deep enough to spare your life, but not your leg,” he said softly, trying to sound like he was in a trance and not merely repeating data he had memorized. “And you lay unconscious for a night and a day before this man—” he pointed at the chief “—came along to drag you out of the mud, and build a fire…”

  “Bah, everybody knows that story.” Stirling grunted. “We tell it over shine at the gaudy house. Now a real fragging doomie…”

  “You worked for the machine that walked like a man,” Franklin continued, as if not hearing the interruption. “He gave you and three others predark things, machines with wheels, and rapid-fires! He stood behind glass that could not be broken and called himself Delfy.”

  “Delphi,” Rogan groaned, his face contorting into an unreadable expression. A hand gripped his blaster, and he let go slowly. Nuking hell, so this feeb was a real live doomie! There was no way anybody else could know those things, especially about the invisible wall that protected Delphi from blasters and knives. He’d never even told Chief Stirling that detail, and he owed the sec boss his life.

  “Guess you really are a doomie,” the sec chief said, seeing the conflicting emotions on the face of his friend. “So, what’s this about Ryan being in trouble?”

  “Frag that drek.” Rogan’s eyes glinted in open hatred. “Do you know anything about Delphi?” The giant man couldn’t care less about Ryan and t
he others. They had tried to ace him, and he’d survived only because of that nameless river and Chief Stirling. It’d been a fair fight, and he held the outlanders no grudge. But Delphi was different. That was a personal matter, and the last Rogan brother had sworn a blood oath to find and chill Delphi no matter the cost. Even his own life.

  Stirling stepped between the two and grabbed Franklin by the arm. “Tell me about Ryan first,” he demanded. “Where is he? What’s the trouble? Talk fast, and I’ll fill your pockets with live brass! Dozens of rounds! Tell me!”

  “D-dozens?”

  “Guaranteed! Now talk!”

  “My dream was about both,” Franklin whimpered, finding it easy to sound frightened by the sec man. His grip was like iron. Perhaps there was just a touch of mutie blood in him, eh? “To the far north, past the Great Salt is a ville by a lake. The rocks are bloodred, the water dark green, and there they shall meet, Rain and Delfy, but only one will walk out of the predark ruins alive…Sometimes it is the one-eyed giant, and sometimes the man dressed all in white….”

  “Sounds like it ain’t been decided yet,” Stirling mused thoughtfully. “And I can make the difference?”

  “Yes! But only if you hurry!” Franklin said excitedly. “And it may already be too late, unless you get there before…” Slumping his shoulders, the TITAN operative began panting for breath as he had seen real doomies do after a vision.

  “Before what?” Rogan demanded gruffly. “Talk, rist!”

  Making a vague gesture with his hands, Franklin shrugged and reeled a little bit, stumbling to stay on his feet.

  Damn all doomies! They were weaker than breadcrumb coffee! Chief Stirling snapped his fingers, and a couple of sec men rushed over to take hold of Franklin and help him to the sandbag nest. Sitting, the TITAN operative began to breathe shallowly, and he wiped his face with a trembling hand. Apparently the locals believed his act, as they moved away to hold a hushed conference. Only the plump blond sec woman seemed to be keeping a close watch on him, as if expecting trouble.

  “Shitfire, Chief, we owe Ryan and his people a triple lot for their help with those muties,” a sec man declared resolutely. “If they’re in for a shit-storm, then count me in to help!”

  “And me!” another sec man added, followed by a chorus of eager voices.

  “Cut the chatter,” Rogna barked, rubbing the scars on his neck. “The doomie said the dream was for only the chief and me.” The old wound still hurt sometimes when the acid rain came, and he always took it as a sign of danger. But was the doomie a danger, or was it Delphi? There was only one way to be sure.

  “Besides, the rains will be coming soon,” Stirling added. “Which means we’ll be hit by coldhearts seeking shelter, new muties, cannies looking to get fresh supplies of meat…. The rest of you have got to stay here to guard the ville.”

  “Mebbe we should check with the baron,” a sec woman offered, glancing toward the Citadel rising from the center of the ville. “He owes Ryan a blood debt for saving Daniel and—”

  “Tell him in the morning,” Stirling retorted, cutting her off abruptly. “However, I’m leaving right now.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me.” Putting two fingers into his mouth, the sec chief sharply whistled across the courtyard. “Hey, Hannigan!”

  Masked by shadows, the door to a predark auditorium swung open exposing a fat man holding a lantern. Behind him were wooden stalls holding the ville horses and mounds of green hay.

  “Yes, sir?” Hannigan asked sleepily, fighting back a yawn.

  We were tossing pipes, and he was sleeping? Lazy fragging bastard, Stirling thought. “Get my horse saddled! And pack a week’s worth of food! Plus a dozen pipe bombs!”

  “No, get a couple of horses ready!” Rogan countermanded. “Along with one of the new med kits, plenty of water, and fill the fragging saddle bags with every pipe bomb they can hold!”

  “Ah…Chief?” Hannigan asked uncertainly, glancing at Stirling.

  Stirling and Rogan looked hard and long at each other, then the chief nodded grimly. “You heard the lieutenant!” he bellowed. “Now move your ass!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  A few minutes later, the stablehand returned with the mounts, the iron horseshoes clanking against the cobblestone streets. Dutifully, Stirling and Rogan checked over the packs, then climbed into the saddles.

  “Okay, Sergeant Hassan, you’re in charge until we get back,” Stirling commanded, tightening the reins. “Give us a moon. After that, consider us aced. But don’t send any rescue parties! This is a private matter, and not ville biz.”

  “I’m sure Baron O’Connor would say different,” the sergeant muttered, stroking his beard. “But since I can’t talk to him till the morning, that’s too nuking bad for me, I guess.”

  “Yeah, you’ll be a grunt by dawn,” Stirling agreed.

  The sec man dismissed that cavalierly. “Been there before, and still made sergeant faster than you.”

  “Fair enough,” Stirling said, extending a hand. “Protect the baron, and watch your back, old friend.”

  They shook. “You, too, sir.”

  Walking his dark stallion toward the gate, Lt. Rogan paused near the sandbag nest. “You better be right about this, Adams,” he growled in his unnatural voice. “Because getting chilled by a howler ain’t nothing compared to what I will do to you if this is some sort of trick.”

  Incredibly, Franklin believed the threat. The big man radiated an aura of danger that was almost palpable. “Avoid the hollow lands,” he suggested in reply. “And watch for a painting of a winged horse.”

  “A what?”

  “A red horse with wings. You shall find what is needed there.”

  Starting to ride away, Rogan shot the man a suspicious look as if questioning his sanity, then faced the gate. “Open ’er up!”

  With the sound of working machinery, the massive gate began to lumber aside.

  “You sure about this, Chief?” a sec woman asked, scratching her cheek.

  Checking the load in his sawed-off scattergun, Stirling said nothing. Delphi had walked right up to the man as he lay bleeding in the grass, then walked away chuckling. The nuke-sucker laughed as he left me to board the last train west. The memory burned in his mind. Was he sure about going after Delphi? Hell yes.

  “Any sign of the howler?” Rogan shouted up to the guards on the wall through a cupped hand.

  “Clear as shine!” a sec man replied loudly. “But there’s something moving in the ruins to the west!”

  “Stickies?”

  “Can’t tell!”

  Fair enough.

  Bunching the reins in one hand, Rogan drew the Webley and thumbed back the hammer. He wasn’t afraid of getting chilled, only of failing. Delphi had gotten his entire family aced, and now was his chance for payback.

  As the gate cleared the wall, the two sec men kicked their horses into a gallop, riding through the narrow opening and into the featureless night.

  As the sec men at the controls shifted the gears, the gate slowed its rumbling passage, stopped, soon closed with a muffled boom.

  Hassan hitched his gunbelt. “Pierpont, Smith, check the juice lines on the diesels! If we need the gate hot again tonight, I want it primed and ready! Everybody else, check your blasters!”

  As the sec men hurried to their assorted tasks, Hassan strode over to Franklin. “On your feet, rist,” he decided. “I gotta keep you off the streets until dawn. Then we both go report to the baron.”

  “Yes, of course,” Franklin said, reclaiming his feet. “Any idea where—”

  “Sir?” a voice said from the shadows.

  Drawing their blasters, the sec men turned fast, then relaxed and holstered their weapons. A young woman stood at the murky edge of the light coming from the alcohol lanterns. She was pale and slim, with long ebony hair tied into a loose ponytail. Her clothes were clean but heavily patched, and a coiled bullwhip hung at her hip. Oddly, the grown woman was cradling a pred
ark doll in her left arm as if it were a living child. Some time ago a child she’d grown to love contracted the Black Cough and died. Devastated by the toddler’s untimely death, the final straw in a life filled with hardship, the woman had lost her grip.

  “What do you want, feeb?” a blond sec man snarled rudely.

  “I came to bring my brother his dinner,” the woman replied, proffering a wicker basket. There were some raw vegetables inside, along with a small loaf of bread and some smoked meat. “I heard something about Ryan…Is there any word about my husband?”

  “Husband?” Franklin asked in shock. There had not been anything in the file about Ryan or any of his companions getting married. This could change everything.

  “Yes, sir,” the woman said with a dreamy smile. “I’m Emily Tanner. My husband is Doc Tanner, Theophilus Tanner.” Then she lovingly looked down at the bundle of plastic and rags she held. “And this is our little daughter, Lily.”

  The TITAN operative was speechless. What was this? Had Operation Chronos trawled Emily Tanner successfully from the past? Then he noticed the scorn in the faces of the sec men, and the wild glint in the woman’s fevered eyes as she adjusted the rags around the doll. Ah. The poor woman was insane, and had fixated on Doc Tanner for some reason. Wait a moment, the dinner was for her brother…. Could this be Lily Rogan? In his last report to Coldfire, Delphi had expressed a belief that Tanner might have had a brief sexual liaison with the former gaudy slut. Now she was insane and believed they were a couple with a child? How very interesting.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Franklin said, trying to sound believable. “But Doc Tanner…Tanner was chilled, aced by Delphi.”

  The wicker basket hit the ground and the young woman went deathly pale as she tightly hugged the doll to her chest. “No,” she whispered almost too softly to hear.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Franklin lied. “I’m afraid it’s true.”