Zero City

by James Axler

  "Can you lift things with your hair?" the baron asked unexpectedly. "My mother could, and I could as a child, but that has left me with age."

  Her hair went still as Krysty stared at the man. He seemed in the prime of health, certainly no more than thirty years.

  "I'm sixty-three," he said. "Our kind age very gracefully. Or, at least, I do."

  The mystery of her own parentage suddenly welled within her as an unstoppable force. "Who was your father?" she asked desperately.

  Snarling furiously, Gunther slapped her across the face. Krysty swung her head to avoid the blow but not fast enough, his jeweled rings raking her cheek like knives.

  "That question won't be asked again. Do you understand me!" he screamed, drawing a golden dagger from his belt and waving the blade about. "Your sight isn't needed to give birth to a son. Nor your hair!"

  With his free hand, Gunther slapped her again, then slammed his fist into her stomach. Caught by surprise, Krysty doubled over, gasping for breath. "Do you understand?" he asked, his voice silky soft as he stroked her crimson hair with the flat of the blade.

  Shivering from the touch, Krysty did understand and tried her best to cower, to appear helpless and whipped. This was a threat that nobody else had ever made.

  Encouraged by the silence, the man fondled her for a while with his free hand. Her skin crawled from the touch, but she gave a little gasp of pleasure, her sight riveted to the handles of his blasters only inches away from her chained hands. Just a little closer, fool…

  "Yes, oh yes," she murmured. But as Krysty raised her smiling face to the madman, her true feelings were betrayed by her hair, which fanned out in a wild corona of unbridled hatred.

  With a snarl, Gunther stepped back quickly. "So, I see you are indeed kin and will never submit willingly. No matter. A baroness would be desirable, but not necessary. I was even willing to use the new med kit to ease the pain of childbirth. But so be it, bitch. Guards!" the man shouted abruptly.

  The door slammed open and sec men rushed into the room, weapons at the ready.

  "Yes, Baron?" A bearded private saluted.

  Strichland rested a leg on the table again. "Kill all of the other prisoners. I have no need for them anymore."

  "At once, your liege."

  Then he rapped the wood with his knuckles. "And replace this table with a birthing bed. I'll mount this bitch until she becomes pregnant, and then she'll give birth still strapped to the bed, and die some day when she can no longer give birth."

  He turned to face the woman. "Your cooperation isn't necessary or desired. Fight me, scream and rage. It will fuel my son, make him strong! A true heir to rule my ville after me!"

  The first guard seemed puzzled. "But, Baron, I thought that Leonard—"

  "Will be regent until my son is of age, then he'll step down willingly." The lies came so easily to him, they almost seemed the truth. Leonard's death had been sealed the moment Gunther found this woman. "I have already taken steps to ensure that no one ever rules this ville without my blood in their veins."

  The baron gestured. "Get the bed. I wish to start immediately on my dynasty."

  Krysty strained against the chains, and for a moment debated calling on Gaia for strength and breaking free to kill these men before exhaustion claimed her. But for all she knew, he could be a match for her.

  Conflicting emotions raged within the woman, and she hesitantly eased her stance. The proper chance would come some other time.

  Misreading the acceptance as surrender, Gunther smiled lustfully. "Obey my whims and life can be very good. How good, you have no idea."

  "Mercy!" she cried, throwing herself against the chains and rubbing against the man, her manacled hands clawing at his clothing. "Mercy, please!"

  With a snarl, he punched the prisoner in the chest and backed away, grabbing for his blasters. The ivory-handled pistols were still in their oiled holsters, but one was angled halfway out.

  Krysty blinked innocently and smiled sweetly like a virgin on her wedding day.

  "You are dangerous," the baron snarled through clenched teeth. "Iron, pure iron. A most worthy mate."

  "Guards! Bring in the bed for her to see. But come no closer than this stool."

  "Yes, Baron."

  "And no food," the redheaded man added thoughtfully. "After a few days, she will be too weak to try such tricks again, and there will be no trouble binding her to the birthing frame. Will there, my sweet bride?"

  Pivoting on a heel, Krysty kicked at the man's throat, the chains stopping the silvered toe of her Western boot a fraction of an inch from the vulnerable flesh.

  Strichland laughed as she slumped to the cinder-block wall, gathering the chains around her for protection.

  "I'll return in a week, my dear bride," he said, sneering, and turned to leave, the sec men smartly holding the door open for him.

  Craning her neck to see, Krysty got only a brief glimpse of the corridor outside. More cinder-block walls and lots more guards. Hopefully, they were only an escort for the baron and not a permanent detail to guard the prisoners.

  Strichland turned to speak, when the window shattered and the man's shoulder exploded blood as he spun wildly, dropping to the floor.

  The sec men had only a split second to register the fact, when a black dot appeared on the forehead of the private with a beard and he toppled over, exhaling deeply. The second man dived for the door, but spewed a geyser of red as his throat was removed. He landed sprawling, twitched once and went still.

  Stretching out her boot, Krysty snagged the baron's cloak and carefully dragged the body closer. Kicking him over, she grabbed a blaster, then searched his clothing. A ring of keys was found in his pants, and in seconds she was free.

  First checking the corridor, she then closed the door and went to the window. A tiny figure waved on top of the building across the market square, then pointed to the north. Knowing Ryan could see her clearly through the scope of his Steyr rifle, she mouthed, "Med kit here."

  The figure nodded and moved into the shadows once more.

  Grabbing the baron by his frilly collar, Krysty hauled him to his feet and slapped him twice before he responded with a moan.

  "Where is the med kit?" she demanded, pressing the barrel of the blaster into the ghastly wound.

  The baron writhed in pain, and she eased the pressure.

  "Don't die yet, cousin. Where's the med kit?" she repeated, clicking back the hammer.

  "My…office," he gasped. "Down…hall…"

  "Let's go," she said, throwing him toward the door.

  In the hallway, some sec men were walking their way, so Krysty ducked behind the baron and shot them both dead. A third stepped into view from around the corner, blaster in hand, when the hallway window shattered and the man crashed against the wall, then sagged to the floor in a bloody heap.

  "Any more around?" Krysty demanded harshly.

  "That's all…" he gasped, reaching for his wound. "I wanted…privacy with you…"

  "Now you got it," she stated, slapping his hand away with the blaster while tightening her grip on the collar. Get him in submission and confused. He was a danger like none ever faced, and her only hope was intimidation through pain.

  Jerking the baron about, she slammed him against the wall, then forced the bleeding man down the hallway until reaching an ordinary-looking door.

  "Here…" he wheezed, his face deathly pale.

  Twisting the blaster into his side, Krysty made the man open the door himself, then shoved him through in case there was a reception committee of sec men.

  The office was empty.

  Kicking the door shut, Krysty slammed the pistol against his temple, and the baron crumpled to the floor. Quickly searching the office, she found the med kit on a glass shelf of a mirrored wall. The rest of the shelves were filled with assorted weapons, including her own .38 revolver. She checked the load and tucked the dead sec man's blaster into her belt as a spare. The weight on her hip was reassuring.
A teakwood box was filled with grisly trophies, and she tossed it aside. But from the rest of the armory, Krysty took a boxy MAC-11 submachine gun with an acoustical sound suppressor, and a sleek 9 mm Skorpion rapid-fire blaster. She had no preference among the weapons. These were simply the blasters with the most ammo clips stacked alongside. Krysty checked the clip on the Ingram MAC-11 and worked the bolt, when a dark shape rose into view reflected in the mirror.

  Spinning, she fired the MAC-11 as the baron charged past her, crashing into the glass shelves. Incredibly, the man rose again, brandishing a sliver of glass as a dagger. He lunged again, and Krysty stitched him from crotch to crown, emptying the entire clip. The force of the bullets drove him back, but the baron thrust for her one last time before slumping to the floor pumping out his life onto the white carpets. Taking no chances, Krysty reloaded and fired again until there wasn't enough left of his head to identify the corpse as human.

  Cries and bootsteps sounded from the corridor. Krysty waited behind the desk, and as the door swung aside, she riddled the sec men coming through, driving them back against the wall, their bodies jerking like mad puppets under the stuttering fusillade of rounds.

  They dropped, and she chanced a peek outside. Clear. Heading for the stairs, Krysty shot another man coming out of the torture room, but he was already bleeding freely from the ruin of his face. More evidence of Ryan's sharpshooting.

  Stopping at the window, she mouthed the news the baron was dead. A match flared for a second, showing Ryan's face. He pointed down and closed his hand into a fist, then raised one, two, three fingers. As the match died, Krysty nodded in understanding and headed for the ground floor.

  On the second floor, she found a few more bodies sprawled before an open window, the curtains full of holes. Then a door opened wide, and out came a busty maid with an armload of clean bedsheets. The woman inhaled sharply, preparing for a scream, and Krysty buried a boot in the woman's gut. The maid dropped her load of linen, gasping for breath.

  The redhead moved in close and administered a swift blow to the back of the head with the butt of the Ingram. With a soft moan, the maid dropped. Quickly checking her pulse to make sure the servant was alive, Krysty moved on. The maid would have a headache when she awakened, but unlike the baron, she would survive.

  Tiptoeing down the staircase, Krysty paused as the brick wall of the first floor came into view. And so did a cadre of sec men, playing cards and smoking pipes behind a sandbag wall, a muzzle-loading cannon pointed at the front door. She had spotted them as the guards who had dragged her into the building only a few hours earlier. They were big and hard looking, but relaxed, obviously depending upon the security of the external guards way too much.

  Staying hidden in the shadows just beyond the bluish light of their alcohol lanterns, Krysty checked over her borrowed weapons. The clip for the MAC-11 was down to two rounds, but the Skorpion was full. Exchanging 9 mm Parabellum rounds from one weapon's clip to the other, Krysty finished just in time to hear a series of muffled grunts and clatters from the other side of the front door.

  "Hey, Lieutenant, what the heck was that?" said a guard, placing aside his cards and going to the door.

  The officer stood and reached for his rifle. "Let's go see. Hannon, you're on—"

  Stepping into the harsh light, Krysty mowed the men down where they stood with the silenced MAC-11, the hissing stream of 9 mm rounds sounding no louder than a tire gently going flat.

  Stepping over the tumbled corpses, Krysty opened the door and there was Ryan, SIG-Sauer in hand. The market square was well illuminated with a ring of torches, and she could see the exterior guards sprawled on the ground, weapons and bodies jumbled on top of one another, in the terrible throes of unexpected death.

  "Clear?" Ryan whispered.

  "Clear," she said, stepping through and closing the door quietly. "I have the med kit."

  He touched the bloody cheek. "You okay?"

  "Nothing a bath won't cure."

  "Good. Let's go."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Carrying a plastic tray of covered dishes, Leonard walked up the stairs to the third floor. The baron hadn't asked for his dinner yet, so the youth was bringing it to him. And secreted in his pocket was a piece of stale bread for the female prisoner. It wasn't much, since the kitchen kept a close tally on the stocks, even for the nobility. Every scrap meant another day. But nobody should be allowed to starve.

  When Leonard reached the third floor, the tray dropped from his hands, crashing onto the floor when he saw the bodies scattered along the hallway. The coppery stink of fresh blood filled the air, and red fluid was splashed everywhere, brightly dotted with the shiny spent brass of an autofire blaster.

  Feeling stunned, he moved toward the baron's private office. At the detention room, the door was ajar and he glanced inside. The chains were empty, the prisoner gone, two additional dead sec men sprawled on the floor.

  Leonard could only hear the pounding of his heart as he headed into the office. More blood and shells. The mirrored display shelves were smashed to pieces, and there amid the shining wreckage was the crumpled body of the baron. Kneeling on the glass shards, uncaring of the cuts received, Leonard tenderly turned over the body, hoping for a miracle.

  The entire universe shrank to just the ruined face of the man who had saved him from the stickies in the desert as a small child, raised him, taught him to write, to sing, to read, bandaged his leg when he broke it in a fall, indoctrinated him as a warrior, the sovereign leader of their ville.

  "Father," Leonard cried, hugging the bloody corpse to his chest. "I'll get her, Father. I swear. If it takes my whole life, I'll kill that bitch for you…"

  THE GURGLING of the nearby river was a low background noise to the sec men walking along the top of the Alphaville wall.

  "Damn flies," one of the men grumbled, waving a hand about. Something had buzzed past him, and he could only assume it was one of the fat black bugs that bred in the river. Horrid things, the bites stung worse than the rain and took weeks to heal.

  There was another buzz, and a man several yards away made a juicy noise, falling to the ground and dropping his blaster.

  "Billy? You okay?" he asked, coming closer, working the bolt on his rifle. Something strange was going on here. Then the buzzing sound came again and he stopped caring.

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, the still of the night was violently shattered as a bright flash washed over the ville, followed by a roll of thunder.

  "What the hell was that?" a grizzled sergeant demanded, walking out of a guard shack holding a cup of steaming soup. The man started to take a sip, but the cup dropped from nerveless fingers as he watched a column of flame stretch into the sky, along with assorted bits of machinery, the blast echoed by the crackling crash of a thousand windows shattering.

  "Holy shit, the brewery blew," a private gasped, coming out of the barracks and sliding on suspenders.

  "Damn fools got drunk again," another man drawled, chewing on a pipe. "Quality control, my ass."

  "That blast must have taken out every greenhouse for blocks."

  "What?" a young private said, suddenly wide awake. "But without them, we starve!"

  Sergeant Zanders turned. "No shit, genius. Corporal Linderholm!"

  "Sir!" the sec man barked, coming to attention in his underwear.

  "Beg, borrow, steal blankets, then get your squad over there to cover those bastard plants before the night chill aces the whole fucking crop!"

  "On it!" The man dashed off.

  "MacPhillips, gather civvies and start lighting torches around the greenhouses to keep the area warm."

  "Will that help?" the man asked, sliding on a boot while standing on one foot.

  "Am I a farmer? Get!"

  Not bothering to salute, the sec men rushed to the task, knowing their lives depended upon moving fast.

  Window shutters were opening in every building, throwing shafts of light onto the streets. People stumbled out asking one anothe
r endless questions and gawking at the running sec men.

  An officer sauntered from the tavern on the corner. "What's the commotion, Zanders?" Removing a small box from his vest, he took a dainty sniff of the pink powder inside, closed the box and returned it to his pocket, instantly more alert. "Muties? A jail break?"

  "Stuff it, ya junkie!" the sergeant snapped hatefully. "Go wake the glazers and get their furnace going. We start repairs, right fucking now!"

  The officer stared at the noncom coldly. "I'm in charge here, Sergeant," he said sourly.

  "Great. What are your orders, sir?"

  A minute passed as the lieutenant buttoned his jacket closed. "Carry on. I'll alert the glazers."

  "Fucking officers," Zanders muttered, tapping the revolver at his belt. Then his expression melted as a rain of flaming debris plummeted from the sky across the ville, crashing onto stores, tents and rooftops.

  "Sound the fire alarm!" the sergeant shouted to a group of gawking sec men. "Now, ya fools!"

  Soon a metallic clanging sounded and people charged into the streets, carrying buckets of sand and brooms. Some beat at the small scattered fires on the street, while others started forming a bucket brigade to smother a large chunk of blazing debris dangerously close to the gaudy house. Inside, the naked women were screaming and throwing things out the windows.

  "Sentries, any sign of rooftop fires!" Zanders yelled at the wall. There was no reply to the summons. "Captain of the guard, report!"

  The searchlights moved back and forth along the palisade, and the guards should have been easy to spot in the glare, but he didn't see a soul. As he marched closer, his suspicions grew until he spotted a bloody arm dangling over the side of the wall, dripping red onto the streets below. Shit, poor bastards had to have been hit with shrapnel from the blast. Then the sec man drew his blaster. Or maybe Alphaville was under attack. This whole thing would make one hell of a great diversion.

  "You three," the sergeant barked, pointing with his blaster. "Get the fuck up there and see what's the trouble."

  Hesitantly, the men obeyed, climbing the ladders welded to the side of the cars and leading to the wooden walkway on top of the wall.