Zero City

by James Axler

  The troops murmured uneasily at that news.

  "Stack the dead. We'll bury them later. No sec men go into the Machine."

  "Yes, sir."

  "What about the wags?" the baron asked, crossing his arms and trying to radiate a positive attitude he didn't really feel.

  "Gone. Along with our extra water and all of the fuel."

  "Well, we don't really need any fucking fuel without vehicles, do we, Lieutenant," the youth snapped.

  "Corporal, sir."

  "Not anymore." The baron walked among the men. "You're a corporal now. You are a sergeant, you're a corporal and you are a lieutenant."

  Beaming faces spread through the motley crowd, and the weary bodies sat upright, holding their bolt-action pieces with renewed determination.

  "Let's kick ass, sir!" a private cried.

  Tolerantly, Leonard allowed the familiarity from the lower class drone. Odd, how quickly he was learning to think like his father and consider them as merely workers, tools to be used and discarded, nothing more.

  "Jarmal, you're in command now," the teenager finished.

  The grizzled veteran had seen this coming and wasn't thrilled by the battlefield promotion. The commanders of the sec men had a bad habit of dying in the Strichland reign. "Thank you, Baron. May I suggest we stay here until the storm dies, and then we go home?"

  "What did you say?" the youth whispered, staring at the older man with a near deranged expression.

  Jarmal sighed. With his wife and children still in Alphaville, he had to follow the little lunatic straight to hell if need be. Afterward would be another matter. Alphaville needed a strong baron, but not another madman in charge.

  Then again, people died in battle. Even barons sometimes.

  "I said we should attack immediately," the CO corrected.

  "Absolutely!" Leonard cried, then he pointed to the nearest men. "You, you and you! Rip this place apart and find some boxes and rags. Private, you're the quartermaster. Gather the weapons from outside and field-strip the autofires until you have enough clean blasters for everybody."

  "We each get an autofire, sir?"

  Leonard took the Desert Eagle from his left holster and tossed it to Jarmal. "Everybody," Leonard stated. "Then we go after this bitch and her one-eyed lover and blow them to hell."

  The sec men cheered and got to work with a fever.

  "One eye?" Jarmal asked, checking the load on the huge blaster. "Isn't she with Harold?"

  "Apparently not. When that man tried to shoot me, his sunglasses slipped and I saw he wore a patch on the left side."

  "Oh yes, and one more thing, Captain," Leonard added, brushing his hands across the Plexiglas.

  "Sir?"

  "Send some men to the supermarket and see if we have any wolves still alive. We'll use the beasts to track this pair to their bolt-hole and take the battle to them this time."

  "Still want the redhead alive, sir?" Jarmal asked slowly.

  "No," the young baron said without hesitation. "No prisoners. Kill them both on sight."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Resembling freshly unearthed mummies, Ryan and Krysty slipped into the government building and Doc closed the heavy glass door tightly, sliding the wedge of wood under the jamb to help it stay firmly in position. Overhead, the storm was noticeably weaker. Thunder rumbled again, but the lag between noise and lightning was increasing. The Deathlands tempest was almost finished.

  "How's Dean?" Ryan asked, uncovering his mouth. "Can we leave yet?"

  "I do not know, sir," Doc said, offering a canteen. "Dr. Wyeth is spoon-feeding him broth, and most of it stays down."

  "Most? That doesn't sound good." Ryan took a healthy swig of the tepid water. "Damn."

  Yanking down her mask, Krysty accepted the canteen and took a long pull. "Whew. Thanks," she said gratefully, stripping off the cloth holding the shoe box on her arm.

  "You seem undamaged," Doc said, pleased. "May I assume the mission was a success?"

  "Shit, yeah." Ryan coughed, also removing his box. Holstering the blaster, he flexed stiff fingers.

  "Excellent."

  Doc returned to watching the street outside as the man and woman raised quite a dust cloud while unwinding the intertwined rags covering them before reaching clothes. Feeling pounds lighter, they climbed over the barricade of file cabinets and started downstairs.

  "Any problems?" J.B. asked, rising from a chair, a napkin tied around his throat and an open MRE envelope in his hand.

  "Went like clockwork," Krysty announced, dropping the stack of ammo clips on a table. "Found these for you."

  "Thanks."

  "Is that spaghetti?" Ryan asked, amused for some reason.

  The Armorer blinked at the odd question and checked the foil package in his hand. "No, corned-beef hash. Want some?"

  "Mebbe later." Maneuvering through the sea of tables, Ryan reached the bedsheet tent and scratched on the cloth.

  Mildred came out, stooping to clear the fold. "You're back. Thought I heard voices. Any damage that needs mending?"

  "Just bruised and tired," the big man replied. "How's Dean?"

  The physician glanced backward. "Stable, nothing more. I've done everything possible. It's a waiting game now."

  Cawdor took her shoulder and squeezed gently in understanding. She shrugged, apologizing for not being able to do more.

  "How many dead?" Jak called out. The albino teen was lying on a crude bed of sofa cushions with his boots off, an arm draped over his face to keep out the lantern light. The first rule of surviving combat, after not getting shot, was to always grab as much sleep as possible.

  "Thirty or so," Ryan replied, going to a punch bowl full of water and washing his hands and face. Krysty joined him, and the water was almost black when they finished.

  "Any chance you were followed?" J.B. asked, finishing his meal. He tilted his head to listen for any noises outside, but only heard the soft moan of the desert wind and Doc humming that damn Caruso opera song again.

  "They were too busy dying to worry about us much," Ryan stated confidently, using his wet hands to brush back his unruly crop of black curls. "We hid and waited at a couple of locations, never saw a soul."

  "Besides, we did a loop into the desert twice," Krysty said, drying off with a piece of a yellow towel. "Went over a few walls, and through that burned-out high school. Nobody could follow that trail."

  "Unless they got dogs," Mildred agreed.

  Lowering his arm, Jak sat up and frowned. "Or wolves."

  "Those were trained wolves," Mildred said slowly. "And we never met the females of the pack."

  "Think any are still around?" Krysty asked, instinctively going for her blaster.

  "Sure as bastard hope not," Ryan grumbled, taking a pencil stub from a pocket and drawing a map of the ruins on the smooth stone floor. "But just in case, we better concoct a battle plan. We got them scared, but when the sky clears, the baron and his men will come boiling out of that bank hot for revenge."

  "We can set up an ambush," Krysty said. "Certainly enough locations in these ruins for us to stage one hell of a firelight."

  "Thirty to five? Bad odds." Jak frowned, lacing his shoes.

  "Agreed," J.B. said, disposing of the remains of his meal. "So how do we change them?" With explosives, J.B. knew no master, but strategy was Ryan's field of expertise.

  He stabbed a finger at the crude map. "We're here, the baron there. So we send out Jak in the Hummer to swing past them real slow, dribbling oil out of a puncture can."

  "Breadcrumbs," the Cajun said, rubbing his unshaved chin.

  "Exactly. You leak a trail away from us and into the desert dunes."

  Mildred paused for a moment, listening to the sleeping boy, then said, "These guys are pretty smart. Do you really think they'll fall for that old trick?" Then her expression changed. "Oh, I see, they're not supposed to believe."

  "Right. But the baron will still have to check it out anyway, just in case," Ryan said. "
I estimate he'll send ten, mebbe half his men after Jak to double-check."

  "I'm bait," the teen said, slowly grinning. "But not trap. Lure away driving slow, hurry back."

  "Could buy us another day," Mildred said, massaging the back of her neck. "And hours count at this point."

  "Still leaves the rest for us," Krysty stated.

  "I've done the best I can with this building," J.B. said, coming over closer and sitting on the edge of the fountain basin. "It's tight, but I sure don't want to have a major fight here."

  "Not here," Ryan countered. "We'll make it a fallback."

  "We can't move the boy," Mildred reminded them.

  Adjusting his eye patch, Ryan frowned. "Not that kind of a fallback. There's a ton of weapons in the pawnshop. We choose a good location and arm it with the useless blasters. Then mine the place with boobys. Jam the barrels of the blasters so they explode."

  "Yeah, might work just fine," J.B. added, glancing at the kitchen he had converted into a weapons lab. Bottles were stacked everywhere, several of them bubbling away softly, steadily building pressure that would soon demand to be released.

  "Yeah," he repeated with a smile. "I got some stuff brewing that will ace the bunch of them if we can gather them in one tight area."

  "Poison gas?"

  "Not quite, but close."

  "Fuses?"

  "Nope. Just break the glass and the chems mix."

  "Good. Bastard fuses give away too much."

  "Check."

  "Sounds okay," Mildred admitted. "It's us or them, so you know my vote."

  Krysty pursed her lips, then nodded. "Let's do it."

  "Anybody got a better idea, speak now," Ryan said gruffly, glancing at the barbed wire and curtains of the makeshift roof. "From the sound of the wind and thunder, the storm is almost gone, so we have to move fast."

  There was no dissent.

  "Okay," he said, "We hit them hard and fast. Don't give the baron a chance to plan or regroup. Keep him off balance. The sec men outnumber us, but we have automatic weapons and the Hummer. Firepower and mobility."

  A knife appeared from out of nowhere in Jak's hand, spun on its pommel in his palm, then was slid smoothly back into his sleeve. "Dead meat," the teenager stated confidently.

  Off in a corner by itself, the string from upstairs jerked, making a spoon in a glass tinkle like a tiny bell. The sound startled everybody.

  Slowly at first, then faster, Ryan started across the basement to tug back to see if it was a warning, or just Doc asking for a piss break, when there came the stitching zip of the HK G-12 caseless from overhead, followed by screams and the raging snarl of wolves.

  "Dark night, they found us!" J.B. cursed, drawing his blaster.

  "Already?" Mildred gasped, doing the same.

  Weapons out, Ryan and Jak were heading for the door to the stairwell with Jak close behind.

  Grabbing his bag of munitions, J.B. stopped at the stairs and turned. "Hey, Millie!" he shouted, and tossed over the M-4000 shotgun.

  "Just in case," the Armorer said softly.

  The physician nodded, then reached into a pocket and tossed him a gren. "The last one. Don't miss, John."

  J.B. tucked it away, threw her a smile and took off at a run.

  Bursting out of the stairwell, the companions found Doc behind the reception desk firing the Heckler & Koch at a swarm of sec men climbing over the barricade of file cabinets. Ryan and the others opened fire, and the invaders fell back screaming and cursing. Two bleeding bodies stayed where they were, draped motionless on the metal banks.

  Advancing to the barricade, Ryan rested his blaster on top of a cabinet between the dead men. They would give good cover. "Volley fire at the windows," he ordered softly. "On my mark…now!"

  A hellstorm of lead shattered the remaining panes of snowy glass, exposing thirty sec men armed with autofires standing in the sandy street.

  "Chill them!" Ryan shouted, riding the bucking Steyr SSG-70 as he worked the bolt and fired steadily.

  Their bodies dancing under the impacts, six sec men fell to the ground before the rest could scurry away. A snarling wolf leaped on top of the files, and Jak shot it in the face with his .357 Colt Python, the muzzle-flash igniting the fur as the head exploded and the body tumbled off. In seconds, the street before their building was clear of live targets.

  As Ryan shoved in a fresh clip, he scowled at the garage directly across from them where the Hummer was hidden. So bloody close, but it might as well be on the moon for all the good it could do them now.

  "Doc, cover fire from the roof and watch for jumpers," he snapped. "Krysty, take the first floor in case somebody gets past us or tries a window."

  "On it," the redhead answered.

  "Godspeed all," the oldster rumbled.

  As the pair disappeared into the shadowy interior of the predark building, there came the sound of running boots, and a mob of yelling sec men charged into view carrying sheets of glass before them as shields. The companions coolly opened fire, but the rounds simply knocked the men back, becoming embedded in the soft clear material.

  "What the… Shitfire! It's that Plexiglas from the bank!"

  Heartened by their apparent invulnerability, the troops rallied and charged again, firing their automatics around the sides of the resilient plastic.

  "Shoes!" Ryan shouted, lowering the barrel.

  The companions concentrated on the shuffling boots of the sec men. Leather toes erupted, spraying blood. A man fell and was trampled by the others. Another dropped, losing the shield, and his exposed comrades died. Then the rest were inside the building, shouting and whooping like madmen.

  Maintaining steady fire, the companions fell back to the receptionist desk as the sec force tried to shove aside the cabinets. But filled with books and with every handle lashed together with spare barbed wire, the barrier was immovable.

  "Gren," Ryan ordered, dropping the rifle and drawing his handblaster, working the slide to chamber a round.

  Holding the Uzi with both hands, J.B. carefully aimed at the ceiling on the other side of the barrier.

  "No need for that yet," he spit, and fired.

  The ceiling tiles broke apart, displaying a dozen plastic bottles tied to the rafters. Riddled with bullets, the containers poured out their pale blue contents onto the sec men. Shrieking with pain, the horrified men dropped their weapons and shields, beating insanely at their melting flesh, white bones and pulsating organs already in plain view.

  Advancing, the companions slaughtered the dissolving victims, and caught a couple of unhurt men trying to leave the hellish lobby. Two shots and the cowards fell face first into the sizzling puddles.

  "What was that?" Ryan asked, backing away from the cabinets. The pungent smell was horrific, beyond description; his nose was running and eye watering. "Acid rain water?"

  Moving to a safe distance, J.B. grinned without humor. "Liquid drain cleaner, spiced with a little of my brew. I found a whole carton in the janitor's closet. Great stuff. They won't hit here again for a while."

  "Got more?" Jak asked, snapping off a shot at a dashing wolf and missing. He cracked the cylinder, dropped the brass and reloaded.

  "No," J.B. said solemnly. "Got a bunch of stuff cooking downstairs, but it's not ready, and this is it for traps. We're on our own."

  DOWN IN THE BASEMENT, a scratching noise drew Mildred's attention from the commotion upstairs. Grabbing a lantern, the physician moved through the fast-food restaurants, tracking the disturbance until finding a manhole cover in the floor of a back utility room. The round disk was rotating, as if unscrewing, and faint voices murmured on the other side.

  Turning off the lantern, she took a position behind a cold furnace and patiently waited. Finally, the cover was gently lifted and a face peeked out of the hole, eyes glancing quickly about.

  "See anything?" asked somebody deeper inside the access shaft.

  "Looks clear," the first sec man replied, glancing about.

  Mil
dred stretched out her arm and neatly shot the man in the temple. His head jerked, and he dropped out of sight down the shaft, the heavy iron lid slamming back into position. Dim cries came from below as the falling corpse apparently knocked several sec men off the access ladder.

  Holstering her ZKR .38, Mildred ignored the water heater and furnace as too heavy for her to move, and passed by a stack of spare doors as too light to be of any use. Ramming her shoulder into the side of an upright freezer, the woman managed to shove the piece of equipment forward one foot at a time. The manhole cover was starting to move again, when Mildred strained against the awful weight, but managed to topple over the freezer to resoundingly crash on top the sewer hatch. If there was any reaction from the other side, it was muffled by the four hundred pounds of steel and ceramic lying across the lid.

  Searching the shelves, the woman placed a few cash registers on top of the sideways freezer, along with a fifty-pound bucket of floor wax. The container didn't feel that heavy. The ages had to have stolen every drop of moisture from the compound, lightening it considerably, but even twenty extra pounds of weight was useful.

  Leaving the door to the utility room jammed open, Mildred went back to her post at the fountain basin where she could keep a watch on the back room and the stairwell. Suddenly, the mammoth freezer shifted a bit with a muffled thump, and she knew there would be no more trouble from below. The physician could only imagine the awful mess in the sewer when the explosion failed to penetrate and the back-blast hit the unsuspecting sec men. They had to have been instantly pulped. The basement was secure again.

  Just then, a violent explosion rocked the building to its very foundation. Reclaiming the shotgun and laying it on her lap, Mildred glanced skyward and wondered just how badly the battle upstairs was going.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  On the rooftop, Doc emptied the HK, raining death from above on the sec men as they scampered about for safety. Drawing the LeMat, he heard a thump and, leaning way over the roof, saw a group of men ramming a park bench against the metal door on the side of the government building. He ignored them and watched for others in the streets. That weak point in their defenses was blocked by an entire room jammed full of office furniture. Even if they got inside, it would take them an hour to dig through the mess. Then again…