Hellbenders

by James Axler

  Danny’s tone suddenly changed. Up to this point, he had been matter-of-fact about his tale, as though he was distantly recalling it from memory. But now the memory became crystal clear, and his tone dropped down to a hush, a sadness invading the very timbre of his voice.

  “Thing is, it was too late for Dad. There was a firefight as we got out of Charity, and he caught a couple of slugs. It didn’t seem too bad, but I guess he was bleeding a lot inside, and he got less and less strong the more hours we were in the wag. It was evening when we broke out of Charity. By morning he’d bought the farm. I managed to keep driving, even though I’d never actually driven a wag before. I guess I must have nearly bought that farm by the time some of Joe’s people found me. They must have seen the wag on a patrol or something. Shit, I don’t know how else they could have come across us, as I don’t think Dad knew where he was heading, and I sure as shit didn’t. It was fate. As Joe says. He recognized my dad when they brought the wag in, and I guess I’ve been there ever since.”

  Danny shrugged, his story over.

  “So you wanna get even with that scumbag Baron Al?” Dean said.

  Danny nodded. “Guess we all do, but yeah.”

  “Have to see what we can do, right, you guys?” Dean added, addressing Jak and Doc.

  “Fight is fight,” Jak said noncommittally.

  They were rounding the base of the mountain, coming around to the direction in which they had first faced, and the direction in which their objective lay. Now the mission was about to begin.

  Lonnie turned to them as they reached the last point of shadow, with only the blazing heat of the day ahead. “Cut the crap,” he said simply. “We need to preserve our strength and breath for this.”

  “Yeah, and that means you especially,” Mik added, giving Danny a beady-eyed stare. “You talk far too much, kid.”

  BACK IN THE REDOUBT, Correll was dividing the remaining people into groups to take turns at training, target practice and maintenance of equipment.

  One thing that all the companions had noted in their brief time at the redoubt was that the only Hellbenders to carry blasters had been those that had formed the defensive party that had met them a few levels down. The rest of the redoubt dwellers were unarmed.

  Ryan raised the matter with Correll, who told him, “We don’t have to among ourselves. Fate has brought us all together for a reason, and when you’re united in that purpose, then there’s no need for blasters. Sure, the sec that met you have their blasters still—it’s a precaution till we get to know you, especially as we didn’t ask for yours.”

  “Why not?” Ryan asked.

  To which Correll shrugged. “You wanted to keep blasting, you wouldn’t have agreed to a truce down on the lower level. It’s fate.”

  The one-eyed man was, in truth, a little baffled by the reasoning of the Hellbenders’ leader, but decided the best course of action was to say nothing. When both parties could benefit from the action on Charity and Summerfield, it didn’t make sense to rock the boat.

  Krysty and Mildred were among the first to be sent to target practice, while Ryan was deputed to be on the first training party, honing reflexes and fitness in the gym section of the old redoubt. J.B., as he’d suspected, was sent along to assist Jenny at the armory, making sure that blasters were oiled, cleaned and supplied with spare clips and belts of ammo for those who would be assigned them, and that all grens were primed and ready for action.

  But as soon as he arrived at the armory, he knew he was going to have problems. The Native American woman had just dispatched the recce party, and so was still in the quartermaster’s stores when the Armorer arrived at the empty room. He punched the sec code into the panel, and as the door swept back with a low hiss, he echoed this with a low whistle at the sight within.

  Stepping into the dim room, he turned to the panel on the wall beside the interior sec door switch, and lighted the room.

  Like all redoubt armories, it was large warehouse of a room, with a low ceiling but a deep set, going back some twenty-five feet into the rock. The walls were lined with racks on which were boxes of rifles, pistols and ammunition, boxes of grens and plas-ex, and racks in which rifles and machine pistols with extensions were stored upright. There were Uzis, Heckler & Kochs, Steyrs, Smith & Wesson M-4000s, and a couple of antitank rifles and bazookas that were stored upright to one side of the armory.

  J.B. stepped farther into the room and examined the markings on the sides of the boxes. There was also a variety of Smith & Wesson and Glock handblasters, as well as the relevant ammo. The plas-ex was of the expected variety, and the grens came in both shrapnel, stun and gas varieties, giving the attack party an extensive choice of weaponry from which to arm themselves.

  J.B. had very rarely seen a redoubt—even the one that had been inhabited by the descendants of the original soldiery where they had encountered the Rat King comp—in which the armory had been so beautifully maintained. The air-conditioning system, which in most redoubts had an automatic dust removal filter, had obviously been kept in working order, and whoever had been put in charge of the armory here had been true to their job in keeping the weapons on view oiled and maintained. He opened a couple of the cases at random, and under the oilskin cloths that protected the different blasters he found that time had been put into keeping the weapons in combat-ready condition.

  The Armorer replaced the lid on the last crate he had checked, and sat back on his haunches in front of the black metal racks that housed the crated weapons. He pushed his fedora back on his head and scratched at his hairline. Behind the glass of his spectacles, his eyes glittered with thoughts and ideas that shot across his brain: given the combination of weapons, he was already trying to work out the allocation and placing of certain weaponry in order to maximize the potential for winning.

  J.B. was lost in a world of strategies and alternative planning, and so didn’t consciously hear Jenny outside the closed sec door. But at the first whirr of the door as it began to move, he whirled around, and was ready for her as she entered the room. He was glad, as from her expression she wasn’t pleased to see him.

  “You couldn’t wait for me?” It was phrased as a question but contained more than a hint of suspicion.

  J.B. shrugged. “Correll asked me to come down here and take a look around. There was no one about when I got here, so I was just taking an inventory.”

  “Trying to find fault?”

  “No, you keep a good armory. Everything’s in excellent condition. It’s rare to see that.”

  Her attitude softened slightly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “One thing, though.”

  “Yeah?” Her attitude hardened immediately.

  “Don’t be defensive. I just want to know if any of these weapons have ever been used.”

  Confusion clouded her brow. “I don’t know. I’ve been doing this a few years, but before that…” She paused, thinking back. “I don’t recall any ever being used on an attack. We keep ourselves to ourselves and don’t get many intruders.”

  J.B. ignored the way in which the last remark had been pointed and concentrated on the important point. “Okay, so if these are well kept but unused, there’s a few tests we should run.”

  “Such as?”

  He allowed the briefest of smiles to ghost across his lips at her attitude. “Well, if you’ll stop hitting out every time I say something, then mebbe I’ll get a chance to show you.”

  Chapter Six

  The trip across the wastelands that lay between the redoubt and the ville of Charity was uneventful for most of the first day. Not uneventful in the sense of nothing happening and it being an easy trek, but rather in the sense of it being a seemingly unending slog of relentless tedium, with nothing to break up the monotony and put marker points or breathing spaces in the day.

  There was no other way to tackle the trek on foot than like this. Lonnie, who was leading the expedition, had a chart that had been drawn up from the knowledge of t
he terrain gleaned by years of patrolling the area, and he also had a portable sextant that Dean recognized immediately as being similar to the one the J.B. used to chart their position in the Deathlands whenever they arrived at a new destination and exited a redoubt.

  There was little in the way of shelter and respite along the route, which had to be as straight a line as possible. It was a heel of a distance to Charity, and the only way to do it on foot in the time they had been allocated was to head straight for it. Unfortunately for the party, this meant a day’s long slog across the desert wastes under the harsh and pitiless glare of the rad-blasted sun, walking at a steady pace that was slow enough to preserve some of their precious water by not perspiring too freely with the effort, but quick enough to maintain a steady rate at covering the distance.

  They walked mostly in silence, each individual counting his or her steps and keeping time to a steady beat to maintain the pace. It was strange how, after a short while, time began to mean little, and distance even less. All that mattered was the relentless tyranny of the beat, as they kept time with an almost metronomic regularity.

  As they traveled, Danny began to lag. Oddly, Doc kept pace well. If anything, the Hellbenders in the party had expected the seemingly old man to be the one who would hold them up. But Jak and Dean knew well enough that Doc knew his limitations, and would cut his cloth accordingly. Doc hadn’t kept himself alive for so long without knowing how to cope with the stresses and weaknesses that time trawling had put on his prematurely aged body. The grim set of his mouth and the dull, lifeless eyes staring ahead, seeing something that was only in his own head, bespoke of the effort he was putting in to the trek.

  Lonnie, Mik and Tilly were well used to the physical demands of the desert, but Danny had spent most of his short life with his head buried in pieces of old tech, and so was unprepared for the rigors of walking in the desert. Dean dropped back when the youngster began to flag, lending him an arm and walking him into step so that he established a better rhythm to his walk, maximizing the efficiency of his stride. He even whispered “One-two-three-four-one-two-three-four” in time with their walk, urging Danny to repeat it as a mantra and so work himself into the pace better.

  It worked, and every time the youngster started to fall behind, Dean was able to ease him into step easily.

  Which left Jak, who was adaptable and hardened to almost every kind of environment, to take in the harsh and unwelcoming landscape around them as they traveled. The albino took the pace with ease, and had a loping stride that almost seemed to propel him forward of its own accord as his heavy combat boots appeared to bounce off the dusty surface with each footfall.

  In truth, there was little to see. They walked miles between pitifully small patches of scrub, a few sickly trees and patches of crabgrass all that marked the passing of another oasis. But Jak was still pleased to see them, as it boded well for there being some sort of moisture present in the dusty soil, an opportunity of having some plant life from which to glean some moisture if their own canteens ran low.

  And where there was scrub, there was also bound to be some kind of animal or reptile life. Certainly there were insects, as they had found themselves attacked individually and as a group by a few stray mutie insects that were derived from mosquitoes but had larger bodies and fibrous wings that beat with a loud hum in the still desert air. They seemed to hunt individually or in pairs, not in swarms, and although they were large and irritating, they were easily frightened away by a wave of the arm and the use of the insect repellent that had been handed to them from the redoubt stores. It was over a hundred years old, and developed for insects that hadn’t been genetically mutated by radiation, but it was obviously still extremely potent.

  As they passed the oases, Jak caught sight of small, meerkat creatures diving for cover into their burrows. They seemed small and harmless enough, but Jak knew from long experience that you don’t know the dangers a new animal holds until you have to come up against it.

  Likewise the lizard life that he observed, poking their heads above ground from their holes in the dry and dusty earth, cold and expressionless eyes observing the strangers who passed their territory. They seemed to be Gilas, but small and perhaps harmless. One thing for sure—Jak didn’t particularly want to come up against their claws and perhaps venomous tongues.

  Also, in the distance and possibly beyond the senses of the others, not as finely honed as Jak’s in the first instance, and dulled further by the monotony of their march, he was sure that there were some packs of either cat or dog type creatures—possibly wild coyote. There were either several packs, or they were being tracked from a distance.

  Jak noted this at the back of his mind. It was a good reason to be even more triple alert than the others, who had seemed to notice nothing this far.

  But there was to be a more immediate problem, and from a most unexpected quarter.

  The sun had long since traveled past its peak, and the setting of the angry red orb and a cessation of the heat weren’t far away. The light began to fade as the night fell, and the recce party was able to slacken its pace.

  “Another couple of miles and we should be able to camp for the night,” Lonnie croaked in a harsh whisper, the arid air and necessary conservation of their water leaving him with a parched and aching throat.

  “Good,” Jak replied. “Make camp before too cold.”

  “Yeah,” Lonnie agreed, looking up at the twilight sky, which was clear of any cloud cover. “Gonna be a cold one. Next patch of scrub is about two miles ahead. Should be able to get there and make the camp before it gets too cold.”

  “About fucking time,” Mik moaned, “I need to eat and rest.”

  “That’s all you ever do anyway,” Tilly retorted.

  “Children, children,” Doc chided, chuckling, “please let’s save the arguments until we are safely home.”

  But Jak wasn’t listening to the easy banter of the tired people who had rest within sight. His attention was taken by something that was just to the right of the course they were taking.

  “Look,” he said, indicating the object, “what that?”

  Lonnie followed the line of the albino’s arm to where the object lay on the desert floor.

  “Fucked if I know,” he murmured. “It’s not in our path, though, so why bother?”

  “Because whatever make it mebbe is,” Jak answered.

  Lonnie indicated his grudging agreement with a shrug. “Mebbe take a look, then,” he grunted, leading the party off their chosen course.

  “Aw, c’mon, is this really necessary?” Mik moaned, his ratlike features contorted into mock agony. “We really need to make camp.”

  “I don’t want to detour any more than you do,” Lonnie retorted hotly, “but Jak’s right, dammit. We can’t take risks out here.”

  He led the group toward the object that Jak had questioned. It would waste little time and effort, in truth, as the object was only a short detour from their objective, and so would still enable them to make camp before the rapidly cooling night became too cold.

  As they approached the object, they realized that it was much taller than it at first appeared. It was about ten feet in height, and seemed to be made of a spiral of round earth, damp and somehow molded together, that wound its way up from a broad base to a point that seemed to end arbitrarily.

  They gathered around the bottom of it, and at a gesture from Lonnie spread out so that they encircled it.

  “What you reckon?” Lonnie rasped. “How far around does this damn thing go?”

  “Got to be twenty-five, thirty feet,” Dean answered.

  “Shit, what makes something this big? And how?” Tilly asked tremulously.

  “That ain’t difficult to answer,” Danny said with a sad shake of his head. “Think about it, Tilly. What do we know that’s this big?”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she replied. “Not all the way out here?”

  “My dear girl,” Doc chided softly, “just
because you think of those rather large worms as always burrowing through the depths of what you have taken as your home, it doesn’t mean that they exist purely within the confines of that area alone. Good Lord, they are, after all, in transit. Where, pray tell, do you think they have come from, or indeed where they are going?”

  “Yeah,” Mik interjected, “but you never see anything like that down in the tunnels, for Chrissakes…just what the fuck is it, exactly?”

  “A cast,” Dean answered him in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s what the worm shits out after it’s eaten its way through the earth.”

  Mik stepped back. “So this is worm shit?” he screeched.

  Dean allowed himself a laugh. “Yeah, good as.”

  Mik spit on the ground, and was about to say something when Lonnie cut him short.

  “If it’s leaving this here,” the recce leader stated flatly, “then it means that it must have surfaced near here.”

  Jak nodded. “Wonder how long that take you,” he muttered. “Check it long gone, yeah?”

  Lonnie restrained himself from attacking Jak for what he saw as the latter’s insolence in the face of his position as recce leader, and nodded briefly. “Fan out and search,” he said sharply.

  “What the fuck are we looking for?” Mik whined. “And will it take long?”

  “Look burrow,” Jak stated, breaking across Lonnie.

  “Yeah, and it shouldn’t be hard to miss,” Dean added.

  The party spread out, fanning backward around the cast, which stood like some mute monument to mutie nature.

  It was Doc who found the hole, following a trail in the dust.

  “This way,” he called. “The desert wind has covered the impression, but if the light was better I think you might notice that it has left a trail. It must be remarkably light for its size, as it has not impressed much, but I fear it has left its burrow here.”

  Doc prodded around with his foot as the others all turned toward him. He seemed to be probing the earth with his toes and the end of his cane, as though something didn’t make sense.