Deathlands 51-Rat King

by Axler, James

  Which would be a whole lot easier if not for the dust storm.

  Ryan scanned the rocks above the redoubt. It all seemed calm and empty, but his eye pierced the opacity of the storm with a burning suspicion. If this was regular weather for this stretch of land, then it wouldn't surprise him if the local baron and his sec men were out patrolling their land.

  His sharp vision saw the glint of a blaster barrel as it caught a glimpse of sunlight that filtered through the dust. A fraction of a second later came the sharp crack of Mildred's ZKR.

  Obviously Mildred had the same suspicions.

  Chips of rock joined the grit and dust in the swirling air, and the barrel disappeared.

  The staccato rattle of a Heckler & Koch MP-5 K cut through the howl of the storm, the short burst kicking up chunks of dry earth and pebbles from around the sparse cover Mildred had been able to find.

  The spray of bullets fanned in such a way that Ryan was instantly aware that they had come from the opposite direction to that in which Mildred had fired her blaster. So they were covered from above by a group of sec men in a formation similar to their own.

  Tactically it was almost a stalemate. The problem was, they were underneath the other group, closed in.

  "Dad! They're moving down!"

  Dean's yell cut through the storm, and Ryan was aware of his son as a blur across the floor of the enclave, tracked by sprays of H&K and Uzi fire that crisscrossed. It was only because of his speed in changing direction that Dean was able to attain cover about twenty yards from where his father was positioned.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Ryan yelled at the boy. "Never break cover."

  "There wasn't any, and they were moving behind me," Dean snapped back. "And they're sec men from the redoubt!"

  For a fraction of a second, Ryan was taken aback, wondering how they got out of the redoubt and into position. No point wasting time thinking about that, though. They were there, and that was enough.

  He whirled, his hand snaking to the panga on his thigh and clutching the handle as he became aware of a shuffling sound behind him.

  The panga was raised to strike when a flash of white hair and red eyes made Ryan drop the weapon to his side.

  "Closing in," Jak said, hunkering down beside Ryan. The Colt Python was in his fist, looking huge and heavy in that small hand. "Moving in like pincer. Their land, too," he added meaningfully.

  Ryan nodded. "How many?"

  "Count seven, mebbe eight. No more."

  "Even numbers, then. More or less. Okay, we've got to get through that channel before they can close us down," Ryan said, indicating the narrow inclined path leading out of the enclave.

  Jak pursed his lips. "Move quick, shoot fast. Sec men slack enough for us see, so mebbe chance."

  It was a good point. Ryan looked back over the hummock. There was a sporadic crackle of Uzi and H&K fire punctuating his brief discussion with Jak. He could see that J.B. and Krysty had moved up to join Dean and Mildred so that they were only twenty yards away.

  There was no sign of Doc.

  "Where's Doc?" he whispered.

  "Lost in storm?" Jak mused. "Let me look." Then he disappeared from Ryan's side and into the swirl of dust and grit.

  And into someone else's trouble.

  MURPHY'S MEN HAD the advantage of old tech radios that kept them in touch. The compact devices spluttered and buzzed in the rad-riddled air, cutting out where old transistors began to fail, but they gave Murphy an edge he knew Cawdor and his people didn't have.

  This should be simple. And if the outsiders just happened to get chilled by accident as they recovered Tanner? Well, that was just too bad, wasn't it? As long as Wallace got the old fart, he wouldn't moan too loudly.

  Murphy raised the radio to his mouth. "Pergolesi, can you hear me?"

  "Yes, sir," came a tinny voice, crackling over the static.

  "Try and pick off Cawdor. Chill the one-eyed fucker."

  "YES, SIR… And fuck you, too," Pri SecClass Pergolesi muttered as he slid the radio into the pocket of his combat vest. He raised his H&K and took sight at the one-eyed man. How the hell did that madman Murphy expect him to pick off anyone in these conditions with the first shot? And face it, that was all he'd get before fire was returned.

  He saw the blurred figure move around as he started to squeeze the trigger, unaware of the sun glinting off the H&K's snubby barrel.

  The crack of the ZKR and the whine of the bullet as it took chips off the rocks in front of him made Pergolesi fall backward, swearing to himself. He heard the radio squawk in his pocket and the chatter of H&K fire from the other side of the enclave.

  Damn, Murphy would have his hide for this.

  MURPHY WAS TOO CONCERNED with his mission going to hell to worry about Pergolesi at that moment. After ordering return fire from the other point of his patrol, he directed his men to form into a pincer and close on the group in the enclave, forcing them toward the narrow exit from the small valley. It would be relatively easy to pick them off from there.

  "Leave the old fart to me," he yelled savagely into his radio. "I can't trust any of you mothers to get it right, can I? Shit, if you want something done, you just have to do it yourself… Now jump!"

  He slid his own radio into a pocket and checked the clip on his Uzi. It was full. He kissed the barrel again, even though it hadn't brought him much luck first time around, and left the cover of the rocks.

  One thing Ryan had been correct about was that Murphy and his sec men were used to the conditions, each generation having been blooded in the enclave by their forefathers as they learned the hard art of defending the redoubt and the mechanism. Despite the discomfort of the conditions, each man moved confidently across the terrain, making much better time than any of the outsiders.

  For his own part, Murphy was down on the floor of the enclave before Doc even had a chance to move out. The conditions and sudden blasterfire had a bad effect on Doc, taking his fragile psyche back to the psychological battering of the trank darts and comp torture. As he shielded his eyes from the dust storm, he felt as if he were back in the dark, wind-battered tunnel with Lori…or was it his beloved Emily?

  "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes…or does it, indeed? Are you, perchance, the Snark my friend, or merely a Boojum?" Doc, quietly chuckling to himself, asked the figure that gradually took shape in the dust.

  "Madman," Murphy muttered dismissively, raising his Uzi to barrel whip the old man into submission.

  Like many another enemy, he had underestimated the seemingly old man. Despite his apparent fragility—both of mind and body—Doc Tanner had reserves of whip-cord strength that could, in an emergency, prove to be of use as a surprise.

  Murphy brought the barrel around in a down-sweeping arc, aiming for Doc's jaw. As the old man brought his lion's-head swordstick up to parry, the barrel of the Uzi was deflected, hitting the edge of a rock and sending a painful jolt up Murphy's forearm until it hit his elbow. The weakened joint buckled, and Murphy yelped in pain and surprise.

  Doc rose to his feet, drawing the LeMat pistol and pointing it in Murphy's direction.

  The sec chief stumbled as he tried to regain his balance and level the Uzi. It was only blind fortune that saved him. A bit of grit from the floor of the enclave caught in a crosswind and whirled viciously between the two men, catching Doc in the eyes. It disturbed his aim enough for the loud and resounding explosion of the shot to discharge harmlessly over Murphy's head as the sec chief regained his poise. He crouched, coming under Doc's outstretched arm with the stock of the Uzi turned toward the old man, angled upward as he drove forward.

  The stock caught Doc under the ribs, driving the air from his lungs and jarring his heart. Doc's eyes widened, his mouth grotesquely distorted as he exhaled every breath of oxygen within him. The only thought he could muster was to try to start breathing again as he hit the rocks and the dry earth in a sitting position. He dropped the LeMat and swordstick, his arms clu
tching at his aching guts.

  Murphy pressed home his advantage, bringing the barrel around to crack Doc's jaw. A light went out in the old man's eyes as he slumped into unconsciousness.

  Shouldering his Uzi, sticking the LeMat into the waistband of his camou pants and stowing the sword-stick in his belt, Murphy leaned over and picked up the old man with a strength that made Doc's deadweight seem like a feather.

  He was paying little attention to the fighting that was sporadically breaking out at the head of the valley, and so didn't notice the white wraith that drifted toward him…

  JAK WALKED PAST the sec men as though they weren't there. Their attention was focused on attaining the head of the enclave. As a result they weren't expecting anyone to go through their ranks in the opposite direction, heading back to the redoubt.

  Jak had spent his whole life hunting or being hunted, and so found it simple to take the scattered rocks and the opaque storm as cover, flitting across the ground and blending with the rocks and hummocks along the way.

  The gathering of sec men at the head of the valley, and their attempt to stop the group attaining open ground beyond, wasn't his problem. Like the rest of the companions, Jak trusted the abilities of the others implicitly, and knew that they would either overcome the obstacles or perish in the effort. Life was that simple.

  His task now was simply to find Doc and try to get him back to the others.

  Jak's impaired vision meant that he heard the fight before he saw it, and he zeroed in on the noise. He heard Doc's loud exhalation, Murphy's grunt of effort and the crack of the Uzi on Doc's jaw. Small noises told him that Murphy was in no rush to finish his business. The scufflings were unhurried, and Jak crouched low to the ground, moving noiselessly across the earth. He paused behind a hummock to see Murphy heave Doc over his shoulder and turn back toward the redoubt's entry door.

  The albino teen leveled his Colt Python, sighting along the silver barrel. He cursed silently through gritted teeth as Doc's swaying and unconscious form blocked his line of fire. He wouldn't risk hitting the old man.

  Holstering his blaster, Jak moved out from behind the hummock and across the enclave with a fluid and silent grace.

  Murphy was slowed considerably by carrying Doc, and so Jak was able to catch up on him quickly. Like magic, a leaf-bladed knife of lethal sharpness sprang into his hand seemingly from nowhere. It would be simple for him to spin the unsuspecting sec chief as he reached the redoubt entrance and chill him before taking Doc back to the others.

  He was within three yards of Murphy, poised as the sec chief fed in the sec code to open the redoubt door, when he heard the slightest noise behind him.

  Jak whirled to come face-to-face with an ancient, battered and home-repaired blaster. The black hole at the end of the barrel was pointing straight between his eyes.

  "I've got no love for that bastard, cully, but if you don't put that knife away now, your brains are going to be just so much water on the soil."

  Chapter Ten

  If, as he suspected, they were evenly matched in terms of numbers, then why the fireblasted hell were they suddenly getting volleys of blasterfire coming from behind them?

  Ryan ducked behind the hummock, uncertain of which was the greater enemy. The new blasterfire was coming from the head of the enclave, and by the manner in which it flew over the heads of the group, kicking up no dust or earth around them, it was clear that it was aimed at the sec men from the redoubt. There was no chance that the newcomers' aim could be that bad.

  No one survived long in Deathlands without the ability to shoot at least reasonably.

  Ryan cursed the dust storm that seemed unwilling to relent for even a second. The fragments of stone and earth whirling through the air stung his good eye, wormed their way under the patch that covered the empty socket and bit into the dead flesh. A line of sandy deposit formed, which irritated the long scar that bit into his cheek, from empty eye to jaw.

  Worst of all, the clouds of dust, earth and stone moved around in the air, obscuring the movements of his enemies coming from the redoubt, making it impossible to see where these newcomers were positioned.

  Ryan made a head count—there was just enough visibility in the air to enable him to do that. Doc was missing, and Jak had gone in search of him. Two down.

  To his left he could see Krysty behind an outcropping. She was trying to pick off sec men, using her blaster sparingly in the poor visibility to preserve ammo. He couldn't be sure, but it seemed that her mane of red hair wasn't so much being tossed by the storm as fighting against it, whirling wildly around her head.

  A few short yards away, Dean was taking cover behind a grassy hummock. His Browning Hi-Power was a good defensive weapon, but not the best blaster for these kinds of conditions. He, too, was using his blaster sparingly, trying to pick off the opposing sec men as they appeared through the confusion caused by the storm.

  On the opposite side of the enclave, Mildred and J.B. were almost completely obscured from his view. He knew they were slowly moving toward his position, as their blasterfire was gradually changing direction.

  He caught a glimpse of J.B.'s fedora, and the glint of a stray ray of sunlight on his spectacles. The Armorer was grim faced, the battle to maintain a defense in the face of the prevailing conditions etched into the concentration on his visage. He was walking in a low crouch from a small crop of boulders toward a pile of bare earth and rock that couldn't even be graced with the title hummock. It would be barely enough to cover him, but it would suffice.

  If he ever got there.

  Through the obscured floor of the valley, Ryan caught a glimpse of someone moving parallel to J.B. along a small rut that was cut into the almost sheer hillside. No human being should have been able to move along the rut as this man did—he ran almost heel-and-toe with a grace and poise that wouldn't have disgraced a mutie goat, even presuming that a mutie goat would be able to keep its balance on such a narrow rut in the first place.

  The man was about five-two or -three, and dressed in a collection of rags that seemed to swathe rather than clothe him. The layers could hide any number of weapons, although from what little Ryan could see the man was, at the moment, unarmed.

  He was about a hundred yards behind J.B. when Ryan first caught sight of him. But while the Armorer was stumbling slowly across the terrain, the man on the narrow ledge moved swiftly and was sure of foot. He seemed to pay no attention to the storm raging around him, nor to the blasterfire that echoed and ricocheted around the enclave.

  He was single-minded about his target.

  As the man drew level with J.B., Ryan raised the Steyr and tried to draw a bead on the Armorer's ragged pursuer.

  It was then that he felt the cold metal on his neck, a round, hollow shape pressing into the carotid artery. Not enough pressure to hurt, just hard enough to know that it was there.

  He smelled the stale breath before the whispered words echoed in his ear.

  "I wish you no harm as yet, my friend, but if you don't drop your blaster, then your blood will fertilize this tainted earth for no avail."

  "DARK NIGHT," J.B. muttered under his breath as he stumbled yet again on the treacherous floor of the enclave. Trying to reach the head of the small valley was an option that now seemed like no option at all. His spectacles were covered with dust, and his eyes stung. He held the Uzi across his chest as he ran, ready to spin the blaster in any direction should the need arise.

  But what direction? The storm was making everything a disorienting experience. So far he had been able to make out Murphy's sec men in the fog of dust and grit. He had a bearing for where Ryan was holed up at the head of the small valley, and he made for it. Millie should be somewhere behind him, and he had heard Dean call out at some point. The youngster was like his father—keen to take responsibility for his companions, expecting the same of them in return.

  A shower of pebbles and earth from above and to his right snapped J.B. back from the reverie into which he had unwit
tingly fallen—a sign, perhaps, of fatigue.

  The Armorer spun to his right, pulling the Uzi into position and squinting into the storm. He would fire if he was certain, but he didn't want to chill Dean or Jak by accident, and that was exactly the sort of move they might pull.

  J.B. had expected to see either of those two, or more likely one of Murphy's sec men whom he could chill in an instant. The very last thing he had expected was what appeared to be a flying bundle of rags that leaped from off the seemingly sheer face of the valley and hurtled toward him with a shrill scream that cut through the whirling howl of the dust-storm wind.

  It was impossible and had to have been a trick of his reflexes blunted by the storm and shock, but it seemed as though the bundle of rags increased its velocity through the air in order to beat him to the punch.

  The Uzi was level with the flying figure as it cannoned into him, an arm knocking the blaster to one side. J.B.'s finger flexed instinctively on the blaster's trigger, sending a hail of fire to bite ineffectively into the side of the enclave.

  The Armorer didn't notice the waste of precious ammo. He was far too busy trying to fight off the flying bundle, which became a whirling dervish of muscle as it hit him, slamming him to the ground so that his spine jarred and the breath was squeezed from painfully constricted lungs. J.B. felt as though he had to have lost a couple of ribs, the pain was so sharp as he tried to draw breath.

  The ragged bundle was now on top of him, pinioning him to the earth. The strips of old clothing were wrapped around the figure in such a way as to obscure its true size. It could have been a small man, or a fat-bellied giant. Certainly the impact on J.B. had made him sure it was the latter at first, but now he wasn't as sure. As the figure lay across him, and the shock of the impact died down to a throbbing throughout his body, J.B.'s instincts kicked in.

  The figure wasn't much taller than he was. Their faces were level, and he could feel the other's feet on his own as the attacker lay on top of him. The weight of the attacker wasn't crushing him now that they were hand-to-hand, so he guessed that his assailant was probably about the same build and weight as himself.