by James Axler
A second mutie dropped to its death as another flare arced for the heavens. Then the searchlights traversed the air over the battleground, showing the winged monsters flapping back toward the ruins. A flurry of crossbow bolts arched after them, and one more tumbled from the sky, its body a pincushion of feathered shafts.
IN A GREENHOUSE, Ryan and Krysty watched the fierce battle while sipping some water and trying to ignore the ache in their bellies. This was the fourth greenhouse they had visited. The crude handmade benches lining the structure were filled with thick growths of bushy carrot tops on one side and plump cucumbers dangling from support sticks on the other bench. The smell of the fresh food was heady, intoxicating, but they knew what the dark loam in the stands was partially made of, and in spite of being hungry, the two could find no appetite for this food.
Moving closer to the wall, they watched the firefight near the tunnel, the stuttering flashes of the blasters and the searchlights.
Lying on the floor behind them was a bound sec man, tied hand and foot with strips of his shirt, a sock jammed into his mouth.
"They got it down to a science," Ryan observed, "with ground crews mopping up the wounded."
"I wonder if the sec men are really good," she mused, "or if they've just fought the same battle so often they have it down to a science."
"You think this was staged?"
"What better way to stay in power then endlessly save your citizens from a terrible enemy?"
Ryan considered the notion. "The local baron can't keep control with the food supplies. If the people ever found out where the soil came from, they'd revolt."
"Remember Mildred and Doc telling us about compost heaps? Wonder why they don't boil their garbage until it's sterile and mix that with the sand."
"Mebbe they don't know that trick."
"But they can make alcohol."
"Everybody has a still. That's booze for partying and fuel for wags. A yard-long piece of seamless copper tubing is more useful than a thousand airplanes."
Krysty's reply was cut short by the sound of talking outside the greenhouse. The two quickly moved beneath the table in the center aisle seconds before the door opened and sec men entered, one holding an alcohol lantern, the other a tiny revolver. It was only a dinky .22, hardly fit to be a starter's pistol for a race. But Ryan knew in the right hand and at the right range, it could kill as fast as a .50-caliber Desert Eagle. Shoot a man in the shoulder, and the little rounds would rattle around inside, bouncing off bones and piercing every vital organ before tumbling out his stomach. Nasty stuff.
"What crap," one man said, walking along the aisles of plants, the lantern sizzling and popping. "Nobody is going to steal a carrot during an attack and risk going to the Machine."
"Better than wall duty," his companion replied. "You see how many we lost tonight?"
"Three or four. Pretty bad."
"Aye."
Reaching the end of the greenhouse, they turned and started down the other aisle. "Damn lucky the fat slut found a predark med kit…"
Instantly, Ryan was behind the man, the long curved blade of his panga tight against the sec man's throat. "Don't move," he whispered hoarsely.
The other sec man stepped backward, drawing his revolver, and Krysty rose to slam a wooden stool over his head. With a sigh, the man crumpled to the ground.
"You're the invaders," the prisoner said until Ryan tightened the blade, a trickle of blood flowing from the wound.
"Here's the deal," he growled as Krysty took away the man's weapons, a knife and a muzzle-loading pistol. "You get to live if you tell us about that med kit."
"What med—?" He gagged as Krysty placed the muzzle of her .38 against the man's crotch and clicked back the hammer.
"One lie, one ball," she said coldly. "Two lies, no balls, Three and you lose anything remaining."
The man broke into a sweat, his hands flexing helplessly in the air.
"Gaudy house," he finally whispered. "Northeast corner of the market. Big fat bitch, Patrica, said she found a med kit. Baron doesn't believe her, but she turned it in as you're supposed to so we can't touch her."
"Where is it now?" Ryan demanded, tightening his hold slightly.
"Vault in the palace. Don't have the combination. Nobody does but the baron and Leonard."
"That his lover, captain of the guards?" Krysty asked.
"Son!" Panic took his eyes. "Don't kill me!"
In spite of his promise, Ryan was torn on the matter. He knew it was the smart move to kill the man. But a deal had been made, and he gave his word. That didn't mean shit in the Deathlands, except to the man whose honor backed the pledge.
"Get some rope," Ryan said.
Holstering her piece, Krysty nodded and turned away, then cried out and dived to the floor. A woman was at the door holding a scattergun. Ryan shoved his prisoner forward as the weapon boomed. The discharge lifted the sec man off the ground, and he crashed amid the green plants, blood and organs splattering everywhere.
The armed guard thumbed back the second hammer of her blaster as Ryan shot her in the knee from under the table. The shotgun fired again, blowing away a dozen panes of glass as the sec woman fell to the ground screaming in pain. Something white-hot scored Krysty's cheek as she shot the sec woman in the throat, then again in the head. The screaming stopped.
Quickly searching the corpses, the companions found a rough map of the ville, spare cartridges for their blasters, a piece of honeycomb, half an apple and some jerky. Krysty carefully smelled the meat, then risked nibbling a corner.
"Wolf," she declared thankfully.
The pair divided the food, devouring the scraps as a group of people bearing alcohol lanterns started to come their way.
"Hey, Sue," called out a voice. "You okay?"
Moving to the far door, Krysty cut loose with a full throated scream of terror as Ryan shot the lantern lying on the floor with his silenced pistol. Instantly, a pool of burning alcohol spread across the greenhouse, igniting the clothing of the dead.
"Intruders in the greenhouse!" a sec man shouted, firing his longblaster wildly into the sky.
Others took up the fight as the companions quietly retreated from the commotion into the blackness of the night.
"Patrica first?" Krysty asked after they had reached a safe distance from the growing conflagration.
Thumbing some fresh rounds into his ammo clip to replace the spent cartridges, Ryan nodded. "She's our ticket to the baron."
"And he's our way out. Let's go."
Chapter Fourteen
Dragging a brace of window curtains behind it, the Hummer rolled to a halt in front of the nameless skyscraper. J.B. killed the engine and set the brake.
"Any tracks?" he asked, looking backward out the window.
"Not a thing, John Barrymore," Doc replied.
"Good," the man said, sliding out from behind the wheel. "Last night was too close of a call. If those muties had gotten inside, we would have been chilled for sure. Sure as hell don't want any of the frigging sec men finding our bolt-hole."
"I wholeheartedly concur, my friend," Doc agreed, stepping to the ground and closing the door. "And here is the solution to our security dilemma. Voila! The Tower of Babel!"
"Not quite. But, yes, it is tall."
Somber and impressive, the truncated facade of the skyscraper fronted the apex of the corner, its ten stories of windows frosty white from erosion and age. And if the building had once possessed a name, it had been removed by the rain and the winds long ago.
"Got that list from Millie?" J.B. asked, slinging a LAW over his shoulder. He had given the S&W M-4000 shotgun to Mildred, as Doc had done with Jak and the Heckler & Koch, including a few of the LAWs and their only Hafla napalm rocket launcher, leaving the pair as well armed as possible. J.B. sported only his 9 mm Uzi, one LAW and a lot of grens. Doc carried his LeMat, and a backpack of Molotov cocktails, a special treat for the muties should they be caught outside when night came.
&nb
sp; Doc patted his shirt pocket, the gesture making his backpack tinkle and clatter. "Right here, sir. Our dear madam physician is most clever indeed. I myself never would have thought of looking for helicopters to find a hospital."
"Yep. The sign may be gone, and the building too dirty to tell if it's white or what," the Armorer agreed, removing the ignition fuse from under the dashboard, "but from above, if you see a short building with a heliport, it's either the local PD or a hospital. Apparently, every hospital had them in her day."
"Are you not going to booby-trap the seat?" Doc asked, curious.
"Too dicy. We might come back running," J.B. countered, walking away while checking his blaster. "Best to leave us a fast escape route, just in case."
"Most wise, John Barrymore. If we wish to use the structure as a lookout point to survey the ruins and ville, who is to say the baron and his sec men have not thought of the same idea, and are already there waiting for us?"
J.B. paused to clean his glasses with a pocket rag. "That's why we're going in slow and silent," he said, tucking them back into position on his bony nose.
The Armorer jerked his head to the left. Doc nodded and took a position at the side of the building as J.B. checked the revolving door. Made of unbreakable Plexiglas set in a steel frame, it had survived the ages in excellent shape. But the lock was standard office issue and easily fell open to J.B.'s nimble fingers.
Once inside the building, Doc reached into his backpack and withdrew a lantern. J.B. ignited the wick with a butane lighter. One hundred years old and the lighter still worked. Without it, he'd be banging rocks together for sparks. They found pyrotabs sometimes in the redoubts, but not often enough.
Under the assault of the bright light, they could see that the foyer was littered with bottles and leathery scraps of what appeared to be the remains of briefcases and shoes. A pair of glasses frames lay near a pile of pinstriped rags in front of the double doors to the elevator bank, and a baby carriage covered with cobwebs stood alone by the telephones. A receptionist kiosk was situated along one wall, near a newsstand and snack shop, and a huge digital clock was a dull blank circle on the wall.
Hopping over a purely ornamental gate, they ignored the powerless elevator and headed for the emergency stairs. The door creaked loudly as they forced it open, disturbing a horde of lizards. The tiny reptiles changed color as they scurried away in every direction.
"Boo," J.B. said, as they started up the long flight of stairs.
An hour later, the friends finally reached the observation floor of the tower. The desert wind moaned softly across them as they walked across the bare floor. According to the sign in the stairwell, this had once been a posh restaurant reserved for the rich and powerful. The entire floor was empty except for a scattering of marble pillars supporting the ceiling. Probably just concrete faced with marble. The walls had obviously been an array of gigantic windows to afford the diners a spectacular view of the city. But storms had shattered the fragile glass this high up with no other buildings to buffet the tempest of the desert winds. Jagged snowy daggers lined the four sides of the window frames, and twinkling transparent shards lay scattered across the floor like a smashed sheet of ice.
Crunching the glass underfoot as they walked, neither man spoke as they separated and went to opposite corners. Below them stretched a desolate vista, the sprawling metropolis reaching outward for miles to the distant desert, where soft rolling dunes marked the end of the ruins. The once mighty city had been reduced to crumbling mounds from the bombs of its builders, and the greatest destroyer of all, implacable time.
"No sign of any hospital to the south," Doc reported, the wind ruffling his longish hair.
"Same for the east," J.B. said, holding on to his glasses to keep them from flying away. The wind was brisk at this height, and he was having difficulty staying on his feet.
"There's a library," Doc said, pointing, his other hand holding tightly on to the window frame. "Always a good repository of…" The oldster squinted hard. "I say, are those trucks in the parking lot?"
"Vehicles?" J.B. asked, coming over to extend his telescope. "I would have thought the sec men had gathered everything with wheels for that bloody huge wall. Hey, those are U.S. Army trucks, and they're filled with crates of military supplies. Hot damn!"
"Hmm, I do recall Jak saying that the sec men retrieved bodies from an attack by the muties," Doc rumbled, his coat spreading out like wings from the stiff breeze. "That must be the location where they struck."
"And the sec men took the bodies but left everything else?" J.B. admonished, lowering the telescope. "But that doesn't make any sense… Oh, they took half of the supplies. A little something for the baron, a little for them."
"And more for us." Doc smiled, marking the location in his mind. "I wonder where they located the military supplies, still intact?"
"Can't be the redoubt. If they got in, they would never leave. So it must have been a bomb shelter," J.B. said thoughtfully as he lowered the telescope. "Just look at all the government buildings this city has! It must have been the capital of…well, wherever the hell we are. And the predark government always built plenty of bomb shelters to save the pencil pushers and ass kissers."
Stepping away from the opening, Doc straightened his collar and smoothed his hair. "A most logical assumption, my good sir. What say we swing by there on our way back and see what the gods of chance have laid at our altar of need?"
"Sounds good," J.B. said, checking his compass. "North is that way. Let's see if we can spot the ville."
"Certainly."
As they walked around the burnished-metal rectangle of the elevator banks, neither man seemed to notice as the doors slid silently apart behind them, exposing the blackness within.
To the west was endless desert, only the hint of mountains lost in a purple haze of the horizon. But directly north of the skyscraper was the yellow river, and beyond that the nameless ville.
"By the Three Kennedys, look at those greenhouses," Doc said, shielding his vision from the weak daylight with a raised hand.
Tilting back his hat, J.B. whistled. "Must have a hundred of them. Where the hell did they find any clean dirt? From under the ruins, mebbe?"
"Or they made it themselves," Doc said, rubbing his chin. "Simply mince and boil your own night soil until it was sterilized, then mix with sand."
"And that will grow crops?"
"Without question."
Whew, the things the old man knew. "Searchlights to attract people and protect the ville from the muties, trained wolves and now greenhouses," J.B. muttered, lifting the telescope for a view. "Their baron must be a genius!"
"Or a farmer."
"Farmer with an army," J.B. stated, spotting a commotion in the ringed compound. Adjusting the focus, he swept the milling crowd gathering before a raised platform. "Looks like they're having a meeting of some kind."
"Any sight of our comrades?" Doc asked worriedly, pressing his boot against the frame of the window. The gusts of wind tugged at their clothes, whipping about the loose cloth and keeping them slightly off balance. It was necessary to hold on to the window frame to keep from going over.
"Not yet," J.B. replied. "Here, take a gander." But turning to offer the telescope, he saw a furtive movement near the elevators. Then the man went cold as he spotted the tip of a gray wing sticking out from behind one of the support pillars.
"Ah, Doc," he whispered, pocketing the telescope.
"Mm-hmm?"
J.B. casually withdrew a grenade. "Muties."
Slowly, the oldster brushed back his billowing coat and drew the LeMat. "How many?"
Just then, they heard a skittering noise, like dozens of claws on a hard surface, followed by the faint crack of a piece of glass.
"Too many," J.B. answered, prepping a gren. The awesome power of the LAW slung across his back was useless for this kind of combat. The antitank weapon took thirty seconds to prep, even if the creatures should offer a nice grouped target. Ha
rdly likely. "Hate to say this, but I think we found their bastard nest."
"Congratulations."
"Thank you."
Easing back the hammer on his blaster, Doc glanced over the side of the building, looking at the distant streets and the tiny Hummer, no more than a dark jot in the tan sand. There was no convenient fire escape or any other way down. Even if they were over water and jumped, a fall from that height would kill them.
"Could we reach the stairs?" the old man asked out of the side of his mouth.
"Not a chance. Ready?"
"So it would seem I must be. On your mark, my friend."
"Go." J.B. turned and threw the gren, while Doc spun and fired the LeMat in a single smooth motion.
The blast of the HE blocked their view of the floor and threatened to throw them off the building, but as the smoke cleared, both men started to fire at the crowd of muties crawling around the elevator bank and coming straight for them.
SWADDLED IN DIRTY CLOAKS, two people walked through the bustling market square of Alphaville. The tall one carried a rolled-up blanket on his back; the other was shorter and most definitely a woman despite attempts to hide the fact.
On this side of the river, the ruins of the predark city had been extensively rebuilt, and while the new mortar between the recovered bricks didn't precisely match the colored bands of the ancient concrete still supporting pieces of walls, the homemade concrete did seem to be holding the patchwork of bricks and cinder blocks together, which was all that really mattered.
A former gas station was serving as a stable for a few skinny horses, and a tavern was open for business on the corner across from a pottery shop, a dozen people inside spinning clay by hand on rotating tables. A tailor was cutting garments for an impatient child, while the mother was giving unneeded directions. A bookstore was a burned-out shell, with workmen digging through the wreckage to haul away the trash. A cooper was frowning in frustration, a water barrel before him leaking water from every seam. A cobbler, a baker, a barber, a school for small children, a gallows, a defense nest of sandbags and sec men. And everywhere were the greenhouses, the glass glistening clean, folks inside doing things with the rows upon rows of lush green plants while grim-faced sec men stood guard at the doors, muzzle-loading rifles at the ready.