Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  Ryan didn’t like the look of the strip of bare earth. They would have to move pretty swiftly to avoid being spotted. On the other hand, the streets and sidewalks he could see were in a state of agitation, so if they could traverse that unseen, then once they were into the throng, they’d be safe.

  Anyway, there was no choice. They had to tackle it that way.

  Ryan turned, still managing to hug the wall, and beckoned the others. They came out en masse and started to scale the wall. Krysty and J.B. were quickest; Mildred found it more of a problem, and Doc lagged behind. But that was okay. Ryan stayed in position but sent them over the wall, J.B. taking first run, until he was left on the outside with Doc, who—by this time—had just managed to drag himself level with the one-eyed warrior.

  “I fear, my dear sir, that I am no longer cut out for some of these physical endeavors,” the old man grunted as he attained the crest of the wall.

  “Bullshit, Doc. You’re here, aren’t you?” Ryan replied, giving him assistance by hauling on his arm.

  Doc gave Ryan a wry look. “And that, of course, is why you felt it incumbent upon yourself to tarry and assist me, is it not?”

  “Just go, Doc,” Ryan said, pushing the old man over the top of the wall. He watched him scramble down and run in a crouch across the bare expanse. From his vantage point, he could see the others waiting for him, and he could see that no one seemed to be paying much attention to the wall and to the protective band of empty ground between. Their focus was much more inward, directed to where they knew the swamp dwellers would be exiting.

  Ryan dropped from the wall, landing heavily and using the momentum to power his run across the empty space. When he reached the others, they all moved as one from the boundary of the ville and the sec area, slipping into the busy streets. They hadn’t exchanged any words about this maneuver, nor had they needed to. They knew one another well enough to read this as the right course of action.

  They hadn’t been spotted as intruders. If anyone had taken notice as they’d scaled the wall, they hadn’t raised an alarm. If they had seen them on the edge of the noman’s land, they had assumed they were involved in some sort of preparation for the defense of the ville.

  “You figure you can find our way from here to where we came up before?” Ryan asked the Armorer.

  J.B. nodded. “Just follow me.”

  As he led them through the streets, they could see that the people were moving with a sense of purpose. They seemed to be forming phalanxes that would protect their own piece of territory, as though they had been organized into neighborhood gangs, protecting their turf. Another thing that Ryan and J.B. hadn’t noticed before, in their haste during the earlier recce mission, was that these people weren’t just detached in the manner of joltheads and those who were under some kind of hypnosis. They were detached because they were dying and diseased. For the first time, they could see the sores and scabs of pox and malnutrition, could see how spindly some of these people were, their flesh wasted by the diseases that ravaged them.

  Their apparent insularity from one another was as much a byproduct of just coping with the delirium of their diseases as it was their brainwashed state.

  Without having to speak to one another, the companions felt heartened about that. It meant that, although they and the swamp dwellers army were outnumbered, they were probably fitter and faster. These people weren’t used to combat, they were not healthy, and their reflexes would be slow, their combat skills—if they had any to begin with—would be rusty.

  If they could get to the place where Jak’s team would emerge into the ville before the sec force had a chance to cut it off, then they would be able to perhaps mount a counteroffensive from the rear and divide the fire from the Lafayette sec force.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but then there wasn’t much time or information with which to formulate anything approaching a comprehensive scheme.

  But even this strand of hope was whipped from their grasp by the sudden sound of blasterfire emanating from the direction in which they were headed—not just the random fire of a brief skirmish or mistaken identity, but the full-blown sound of an all-out firefight.

  “Fuck it,” Ryan gritted. “No point trying to slip by unnoticed now. Let’s do this fast.”

  As one, they increased their pace, preparing their blasters and themselves for imminent battle. They had tried to blend in with their surroundings before, but now they were beyond caring. They attracted a few confused glances from the citizens who were preparing their defenses, but they were only five, and they were headed toward the firefight, not away from it. How could they be part of the enemy force?

  The insularity of the brainwashed citizens allowed them this swift and unimpeded path with J.B. leading the way. The incessant and unceasing chatter of blasterfire rent the air and grew louder with every second, with every yard covered.

  “Dark night,” J.B. cursed as they turned the final corner and found themselves faced with an army of sec men mounted along three walls, blasting down into the yard. “It’s like a blasted bear pit.”

  “Still might save the bear,” Ryan yelled, bracing himself against a wall for cover and starting to pump out rounds from the Steyr, firing from the hip into the sec men gathered on the nearest wall.

  Choosing whatever cover they could find, the other four companions started to fire on the sec force, who were suddenly torn by the activity to their rear. Some tried to turn and fire on the attackers to their rear, falling off the wall and into a hail of fire as they did so. Others tried to ignore the fire behind them, hoping or assuming that someone else would cover them as they continued their assault on the swamp dwellers.

  Mildred and J.B. moved behind Ryan, Krysty and Doc, coming out of cover and running back so that they could double around the maze of alley that ran behind the buildings. Each block in the ville was made up of four streets forming a square, with alleyways behind linking the sidewalks on the front of each building. From their initial position, they could fire on two of the three walls that were swarming with Lafayette sec men. But this still left one wall from which the sec force could fire on the swamp dwellers with impunity.

  It was this problem that J.B. and Mildred sought to address. By moving around the alley, they intended to attain a position from which they could hit that wall, one from which an uninterrupted stream of fire was raining down into the yard and onto the rebels.

  “Hope you know where we’re going, John,” Mildred panted as they pounded the concrete.

  “Trust me,” he said, “and hold back when I say.”

  She was about to ask him why, but saved her breath for running when she saw him dip into the canvas hardware bag he carried. He took out two grens, both of which were shrapnel grens. As well as their explosive power, they would spread white-hot and razor-sharp shards of metal in a large radius.

  It was a gamble. Tossing the grens into the alley would give the pair little or no time to escape, and the enclosed space would ensure a maximum chill from the explosions. But the force would also take out part of the wall, and the danger was that some of the shrapnel would chill some of the rebels.

  Not that much of a gamble. The way things were right now, the fighters would soon be wiped out anyway.

  “Back!” J.B. yelled to Mildred as he pulled the pins on both grens and tossed them underhand into the alley, so that they would keep a low trajectory, centering their impact at around three-quarter height on the wall.

  She hugged the wall, shutting her eyes from the light of the blast, opening her mouth to stop the pressure of the sound wave, blocking her ears.

  “Okay,” J.B. yelled, coming around with the mini-Uzi in his hands. He fired in short, choppy bursts, aiming for groups of sec men as they staggered out of the clouds of brick dust. Some of them were ripped to shred, bleeding from wounds caused by the shrapnel, screaming incoherently as pain and blood blinded them. Some had missing limbs, others were crawling since their legs had been torn by shrapnel. Loss of bl
ood would make many buy the farm, as the white-hot metal had ripped holes in them that had ruptured arteries, their lifeblood pouring from them too quickly to staunch. Those that could remain in some way mobile now found themselves walking into the fire from the Uzi, and the carefully chosen shots from the ZKR as Mildred stood behind J.B., choosing her targets as befitted a handblaster.

  Her concentration was broken by the sound of wags behind them. She left J.B. and ran back to the corner of the alley. She could see three wags, each carrying a contingent of sec, speeding toward them.

  If they stayed in position, they would be trapped.

  “John, pull back,” she yelled as she ran toward him. “Backup’s arrived—too many for us.”

  Still firing to prevent any stragglers advancing on them, he followed her backward, turning and twisting along the maze of alleys that would take them back to the others. He suddenly held up the Uzi and stopped firing, sure that he had spotted a familiar face among the dust and debris. Was that Prideaux? Were some of the rebels using the gap blasted in the wall to make good their escape?

  It was too late to do anything about that now. He could hear the wags screech to a halt and the sec forces start to pound the sidewalk and hurtle into the alley, still uncannily silent.

  “Millie, I—”

  “Yeah, I saw him, too… I think,” she said breathlessly. “We need to regroup with the others before we make another move.”

  WHEN THE ATTACK had started, Jak had cursed Prideaux for being a stupe and taking the army out of the sewer before he had completed a full recce. Then he had cursed the sec force for knowing that they would be here. But most of all he had cursed himself for not thinking of the possibility that this could happen.

  The thoughts took a fraction of a second to cross his mind, and didn’t even impinge on his true consciousness. His drive for survival had kicked in with his first shout, rendering everything else secondary.

  Jak could see the battle begin in front of him as though it was in slow motion. Perhaps it was only the speed of his own reflexes as he watched and assessed that made it seem that way, but nonetheless he urged his ragged army to move faster. They were all clear of the maintenance hatch by now, and for any of them to attempt to scramble back down would be tantamount to buying the farm. The only thing they could do was stand and fight—but where could there be cover, here in this completely open yard?

  Jak had found some himself, and in many ways there only two obvious answers: hug the walls or head for the dormitory building. Casting an appraising glance, Jak could see that the sec forces were using all three walls to fire over with SMGs. That meant that to fire at a downward angle of 180 degrees, the men on the crest of the wall would have to lean right over to sight and fire, making themselves obvious targets. It gave anyone up against the wall a slight respite, and the opportunity to fire up and along, catching sec men before they had a chance to realign.

  Also, there seemed to be no one coming through the dormitory building to either storm the yard or to establish it as another command point from which to fire on the rebels. Did that mean that Dr. Jean didn’t trust his men to meet the rebels face-to-face, without the protection of the wall? Or was it just an oversight?

  Either way, it didn’t matter. If they could get out of the yard and into the dormitory building, then they could either use that to mount a siege, or be through it and out into the streets before the sec force had a chance to move on them.

  But right now, there were more pressing concerns. The walls were lined with sec men mounted on ladders, who were firing into the yard. The area itself was a mass of screaming, heaving people as the rebel army tried to keep moving, avoid being hit and fire back.

  It was still in semidarkness. That was the thing that prevented it being a massacre. For some reason, the sec force hadn’t thought to bring spots to light the area and make every target clear. The fact that the sec men had infrared goggles was something he forgot in the heat of the moment. Jak counted about eight rebels down and probably chilled. Others may be injured, but they were still moving, and they were returning fire. It was impossible to see if they were hitting any of the sec force, but if nothing else they were distracting its fire.

  Considering the sec force had the rebels more or less trapped, they were poor tactics, and Jak began to wonder if Dr. Jean’s men were going to be the problem he had suspected after all. But right now, he had to act.

  “Walls—fire up—move to building shelter,” he yelled, straining to make his voice heard above the noise. He knew he had no hope of being heard by all of them, but he prayed that his words would be picked up and passed on.

  In some way, it had to have been working. The area in the center of the yard began to thin out as the rebel army moved to the edges.

  He heard shattering glass—the frequency high and cutting through the dull roar of blasterfire—as some of the rebels broke into the dormitory building.

  Looking up, Jak could see the muzzle of an SMG and the hands holding it. The torso of the sec man edged over tentatively, searching for more prey. He became that prey himself, as Jak twisted his body, angled the Colt Python and fired. The Magnum slug ripped into the area where chest and throat came together, rending them apart with its force, the exit wound shattering the man’s vertebrae at the base of his neck, his head lolling limp and useless as he fell backward, driven up and out by the momentum of the slug.

  One down, who knew how many more to go…but it was a start.

  The firefight continued, the rebels adopting the tactics of firing from what little cover they could find, and making the sec men reveal themselves a little more to become targets themselves.

  Marissa skipped around the rebels lining the walls, looking for Jak.

  “Hey, babe,” she said when she found him, fighting for breath and shouting to make herself heard above the roar of blasterfire, “we’re gettin’ back at ’em.”

  Jak shook his head. “Still pinned here.”

  “Yeah, but the guys in the building over there may be able to do something about that.” She grinned. “Some of ’em are clear in there, and they’re thinking about making a charge around the side, hitting the sec as they’re perched on the walls. Cool, eh?”

  Jak looked at her. His face was seemingly as impassive as ever, but behind the white mask he was agog. How stupe were these people? With no notion of how many sec there were, and no recce of the position beyond the dormitory building, they were going to risk running into a certain chilling.

  He was just about to voice his doubts, or make a run for the dormitory himself to stop them, when the wall to his left imploded, the sound of two grens going off close enough to meld into one momentarily deafening him so that he saw the wall fall in, spilling chilled and wounded sec. Some of the rebels were trapped by falling masonry, others fled from the carnage into the center of the yard, not caring that they might be fired upon, hoping that the clouds of dust would cover them.

  It was hard to see what was going on with the noise and the clouds of dust, and why the wall had exploded was a complete mystery. All that Jak knew was that the battle had increased suddenly in intensity.

  Sec men—those not directly in the line of gren impact and the line of blasterfire that chattered from beyond the wall—began to pour into the yard, running and yelling through the clouds of dust, all caution abandoned. In the distance Jak was sure he recognized the firing patterns of one of the SMGs, and could hear the crack of a target pistol. Could it be possible that… There was no time to develop the thought. All concept of keeping battle lines and formations were lost as the yard became a melee of bodies, blasting at one another and coming up together in hand-to-hand combat.

  It was almost impossible to see what was going on in the confusion. Most of the rebels were chilled by now, of that Jak was sure. Hopefully, some had managed to get away. If they could get out of the dorm building, in this confusion it might be possible to run. Despite their infrared goggles making it easier for them to see men
in the confusion, many of the sec had also bought the farm, and this would do little more than piss off Dr. Jean in a big way. It seemed as though the whole attack had been futile.

  Yet how had they known that the rebels would use the sewers?

  No time to think of that now. Jak and Marissa stood back to back, pinned by the wall farthest from the dorm building, with little hope of an avenue of escape. It looked as though their only hope was to go down fighting and take some of the sec force with them.

  “Been nice knowing you, babe. Pity it never worked,” Marissa said.

  Jak didn’t bother to reply. The whole thing felt hollow to him.

  They picked at sec men with their shots as they came out of the confusion, but even using his Colt Python with care, there came a point where Jak had to reload.

  As he did so, a stocky sec man with infrared goggles and a scarred face to match his own loomed out of the dust clouds. He was holding an AK-7, but not in a shooting grip; rather, he was holding it as a club.

  Jak, still fumbling with his blaster, noted this with an almost detached curiosity before the sec man swung the blaster, the stock taking him under the chin. He tried to move, to roll with the blow, but for once his reflexes—dulled by the realization that they had blown the attack, perhaps—were just a little too slow, and he felt the world spin sickeningly, bile rising in his throat almost as quickly as the darkness closed in from the corners of his vision…

  “OH GOOD, I WAS HOPING YOU wouldn’t take too long to come around. Otherwise I would have had to try to rouse you myself, and that would have made me terribly angry.”

  The voice was sibilant and soft, too much so for the man from which it emanated. Jak knew this as soon as he forced his eyes open, ignoring the pain that coursed through his skull as the light hit his retinas. He recognized him as Dr. Jean from the statues and murals they had seen during their recce mission. Beside him, standing slightly back in an attitude of respect, was the sec man who had hit him back in the yard. He recognized him even without the goggles by the scars on his face. His eyes were better hidden: small, piglike and shifty, not resting on anything for any length of time. Perhaps he was nervous. Certainly, the baron made Jak cautious, if nothing else. He was too calm, too quiet.