Hellbenders

by James Axler

  “Don’t draw attention to yourself,” Dean muttered in a low undertone to Danny. “We don’t want anyone coming around the back to wonder why we’re in a hurry and blast first before asking any questions.”

  “Fuck it, I think I may have gathered that. I know I’m not that great at this, but I’m not a complete idiot,” Danny replied with testy edge to his voice. “Anyway, who got us out the easy way?”

  “Okay,” Dean replied with a placating gesture. “There is one thing that bothers me, though. How the hell did you know about the back door, and where it was?”

  They reached the end of the alleyway and turned into the main drag. Danny was leading them back into the crowd that had gathered around the bar. They skirted the far edge of the crowd so as not to get noticed by those gathered around, or recognized by those now emerging from the bar who could point them out to the sec men. Dean tried to keep an eye out for the rest of the recce party, but it was too confused and rowdy around the bar to see anything definite.

  “This way,” Danny said, taking Dean down the first turn that led away from the main drag. “Now just stick with me and trust me.”

  “It’s not that I don’t,” Dean countered. “It’s more a case of not knowing what the hell is going down here. After all, you said—”

  “Said nothing,” Danny interrupted. “Listen, everyone who ever lived in Charity knows all about the drag, and remember my dad did sec over the whole ville. Anyway, I’ve seen the plans of this ville, back in Baron Al’s little private sanctum. And that, my friend, is where we’re going now.”

  “But what about the others?” Dean questioned. “We’re supposed to be on recce for the trade convoy, not chasing after—”

  Danny stopped walking and turned heatedly on Dean. “Listen,” he snapped, “there’s five of them going after that information. I figure that the real way forward is to get more info on the old tech. And I figure that’s what your people want, as well. So we leave the scouting to them, and we try to get our hands on something a little more interesting, right?”

  “But there’ll be time for that when we’ve raided the convoy,” Dean reasoned. “Right now the best thing is to—”

  “The best thing is to cover as many bases as possible,” Danny interrupted once more. “Just trust me on this.” He held up his hands. “If I’m wrong, chill me already. But we could do everyone a few favors. I know where the storehouse is, and I know how to get in there. So do we go, or do we not?”

  Dean nodded firmly. “Let’s do it,” he said simply.

  Danny grinned and turned to go, leading Dean away from the main drag and into the main body of the ville.

  In a matter of just a block, the drag seemed to be forgotten, the commotion around the bar fading into the background as the rest of the ville went about its everyday business. By this time, most people were up and about, and the trading posts and businesses were open. People moved slowly in the heat, the pastel colors and whitewash of the adobe buildings, stained by age, reflecting the heat back into the streets while the few unpainted brick buildings absorbed the heat, their surfaces already like kiln ovens that radiated heat back onto the street and into the path of passersby, including Dean and Danny.

  The younger Cawdor noted that the businesses concerned with services such as clothing and shoe repair, ironmongery and blaster maintenance, were doing well. There were more than a few people availing themselves of these services. On the other hand, the businesses and trading posts concerned with food were devoid of both stock and customers. Water was being sold, and slate boards that had recently wiped and rechalked prices on their surfaces, told of the drought that had started to bite into the ville.

  Dean was conscious that they were dressed differently from the everyday ville dwellers of Charity. Their dark, thick clothing was not only uncomfortable and swelteringly hot in the increased temperatures of the ville streets, but also stood in sharp contrast to the lighter clothing—both in material and color—of the other people that passed them on the streets. At one point, Danny suddenly changed direction and led them down a side street. From his body language, Dean understood that Danny had seen someone or something that he wished to avoid, and so kept his head low and followed suit. A few yards down the street, Danny pulled Dean into a quiet doorway and watched as a man walked down the end of the street.

  “Knew my dad…and me,” he said by way of explanation before leading Dean out into the street again.

  “Where are we going?” Dean asked as they turned back to their original direction.

  “You’ll see,” Danny replied enigmatically.

  The streets became quieter the farther out they went, until they were nearly out on the edge of town, entering the old industrial area. Like the main drag, this part of the ville was now given over to bars and gaudys like those on the main drag. There was now more activity on the streets, and a number of gaudy sluts and drunks littered the streets. The sluts tried to proposition Dean and Danny as they passed.

  “Hey, sugar, want a piece of ass?”

  “Action sweetie, real cheap, yeah?”

  It was difficult to know how to reply without attracting attention to themselves. The usual response in this part of the ville would be to pay jack and use the service. Any attempt to avoid buying a woman would seem out of place, yet neither young man wanted to waste time by even appearing to make a transaction. Their brief dismissals were met with insults and curses, and attracted attention from some of the drunks.

  “Shit, how much farther?”

  “Not far,” Danny replied in an undertone. “Baron Al loves to keep his stock of old tech hidden in plain sight. I reckon he doesn’t know anyone else is aware of it outside of him or his sec.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Dean muttered.

  In a few moments they arrived outside an old factory building that looked to be as decrepit as any of the bars and gaudys that surrounded it. However, it didn’t escape Dean’s notice that the building was less used than any of the others, with gaudy sluts hanging around outside but not entering, as they did the other buildings, and drunks sprawled unconscious outside it rather than coming in and out with brew and spirit.

  “That’s it?” Dean asked.

  Danny nodded. “And, my friend, I know the way in that bypasses the sec guard,” he said with a grin.

  Dean took note of the guard who was positioned by the main entrance, posing as a drunk but noticeable to Dean’s combat-trained eye by the manner in which he held his blaster, deceptively close to a firing position. Danny took them away from the building and past the bar next to it, weaving his way in and out of the drunks who were loitering outside. The two young men slipped around the side of the bar and walked along the rear of the bar until they reached the alley that ran between the two buildings. Dean could see another supposed drunk lurking at the rear of the old tech warehouse, also cradling his blaster in a manner that would make it easy for him to come into a firing position.

  “How do we do this?” he whispered.

  Danny looked at his wrist chron. “We wait. Unless they’ve changed the routine drastically in the time I’ve been away, the guy at the back should saunter around to the front in a few minutes, just to check with the guy at the front.”

  “Hot pipe,” Dean exclaimed, “how can they be that slack!”

  Danny smiled slowly. “It’s like that here. No one much ever comes to Charity, right? So there’s only ever problems with out-of-hand drunks, and they either get chilled or beaten, and are too fucked to really be a threat.”

  Dean shook his head. “Shit, what a way to run a ville.”

  “Be thankful this bit is this easy,” Danny replied. “’Cause the raid on the convoy sure as shit won’t. I’d say Baron Al is so paranoid about outsiders that he’ll have sec hyped up on jolt and armed one for ten.”

  Dean shrugged. “So let’s do the easy bit.”

  The two young men waited for a couple of minutes until the “drunk” at the back of the old industrial bui
lding got to his feet with an ease that belied his apparent state, and began to wander around the front of the building via the far side from where Dean and Danny waited.

  “They’ll talk awhile, but not long, I’d guess, just in case Baron Al comes calling,” Danny whispered. “Let’s go.”

  Dean followed Danny as the young man moved out of the shelter of the building beside their target and slipped across the gap constituted by the alleyway until they were at the back of the building that housed the old tech.

  Looking up at the outside of the building, Dean could see that the old two-story industrial block had only one apparent exit at the rear: a door on the upper story that could be accessed by an old metal fire escape. All the windows had been covered with sheets of corrugated iron or metal salvaged from other parts of the industrial area, and these had been welded into place over the previously open areas. Even the door at the top of the fire escape had been covered and welded, on closer inspection. On the lower story, the windows had been filled in with brick and concrete block from rubble, and the huge double doors that would, in the days before skydark, have been where wags picked up whatever the building produced were now welded shut, with large metal girders across the join between the doors.

  The two young men were at the rear of the building, listening for any sign of the sec guard approaching, and Dean couldn’t for the life of him work out how Danny could get into the building.

  Danny grinned, looking at Dean, and said, “Trust me on this, dude.”

  He went down on his knees at the juncture where the bottom of the wall disappeared into the earth.

  “Should still be here,” he muttered to himself as he burrowed in the dust. “Got it!” he added triumphantly as he pulled a concealed ring from beneath the topsoil. Turning to Dean he said, “Got to do this carefully, in case we leave too little on top when we go in.”

  “What the hell is it?” the younger Cawdor asked, helping Danny to carefully lift what appeared to be a narrow trapdoor.

  “Access shaft,” Danny replied. “This gets us down into the basement of the building, where the generators are. I think it must have been for maintenance at one point, but it was mostly forgotten. See, my dad was thorough and made a good recce of the whole place when Baron Al put him in charge, but I don’t think he ever reported everything he found. This was always kept covered, and it looks like it hasn’t been disturbed since.”

  “Be triple hard to cover when we go down, though,” Dean pointed out as Danny slipped into the narrow causeway. “The ring’s gonna stick out when the sec comes back.”

  “Have to trust that,” Danny said simply. “There isn’t any other way to get in, and with a bit of luck they won’t notice it. Hell, they don’t know it’s there, it’s at ground level and they have no idea what it’s for. We just try and keep as much soil on top as possible.”

  With which, he started to slide between the partially opened trapdoor and the ground, trying to keep the trapdoor as level as possible and so keep the covering layer of soil intact.

  Dean watched Danny disappear into the hole and, shrugging, followed him.

  The shaft was dark and airless, the atmosphere incredibly hot and it stank of decay. It was obvious that it was rarely used. In fact, Dean figured, it probably hadn’t been in use since Danny had left the ville. There was a metal rung ladder that was bolted to the concrete side of the shaft, and Dean felt his way down it gingerly, hearing Danny’s boots on the metal a few feet beneath him. Then he heard his companion’s feet touch dull-sounding concrete or brick, and he knew that they had almost reached the bottom.

  “Duck when you get to the bottom,” Danny whispered, “the shaft is only about four feet.”

  “I hope you know the way from here,” Dean replied. “I don’t want to end up heading back out into the center of the ville.”

  “It’s only one way we can go, don’t worry,” Danny replied with amusement in his voice.

  It was pitch black at the bottom of the shaft, and the heat subsided into the coolness of a subterranean tunnel, the stifling confinement of the entry shaft now past. Dean bent forward and followed Danny’s footsteps, unable to see him as his eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness. The boy had been right about there only being one direction they could head. The bottom of the shaft had been a tunnel in one direction, and a wall at the other, although Dean could feel, as he lightly ran his hands along the sides of the shaft to try and detect its width, that there were pipes and cables running along it that ran straight into the wall by the shaft.

  “What the fuck was this for?” he asked.

  “Dunno for sure,” Danny replied. “I figure that it must have been to do with the power supplies for the building before skydark, and mebbe the generator Baron Al’s got going when he moved in later. I do know that this runs under some of the other buildings, too. We need to take the first shaft up, which should be about here,” he added with a distracted tone, as though looking for something where he couldn’t see. “Shit, found it!” he exclaimed triumphantly, adding, “just in front of you, about five yards. You need to pull yourself up.”

  Following the sound of Danny’s voice, Dean reached up into empty space and groped for the bottom rung of the metal ladder that, once again, was bolted to the side of the shaft. Pulling himself up, he winced as strong light penetrated the shaft, then flooded it, as Danny opened the trapdoor at the top of the shaft.

  “This is it?” he asked as he followed Danny up into a bare side room that was only ten feet by ten.

  “Ah, that’s the joy of it.” Danny laughed. “The shaft is put out of the way of general use so it can’t be a hazard. Which means it gets hidden away from the prying eyes of any sec—especially those who can’t be bothered to check too well.”

  Dean replaced the trapdoor in the floor carefully and looked around the empty room. Dust motes were visible in the air, and like the entire building, it was lighted by ceiling panels, a few of which were either dead or blinking erratically. In one wall there was a simple metal door.

  “This should bring us out into the ground-floor corridor—most of the tech and all the paperwork is on the upper level,” Danny stated, opening the door slowly and scanning the empty corridor. Both he and Dean listened intently, but could detect no signs of activity. Danny indicated that they should move, and readied his Uzi in case he needed it. Dean had his Browning Hi-Power to hand, checked and reloaded. Given Danny’s inability with a blaster, as he proved during the fight with the mutie cat pack, it was precaution Dean felt to be more than necessary.

  The building seemed deserted. There was no sign of activity, and the only sounds were the low hum of a generator and distant electrical activity, none of which indicated a need to be on triple red. Nonetheless, neither of the young men was willing to take a chance.

  The lower story of the building was little more than an open factory floor, with scattered benches and debris giving no clue as to what had been manufactured there in the days before the nukecaust. Dean felt uneasy with the floor being so open. It would be all too easy for any sec to enter and see them immediately. The sooner they were past this obstacle, the better.

  Danny led them to a staircase that spiraled up the far wall, leading to a door set in the wall. Dean followed him, eyes scanning the walls and the door set into the front of the building for any signs of activity.

  “Come on, let’s move it,” he murmured to Danny.

  “We’re there,” the youngster replied as he opened the door. Dean swung through after him, taking one last recce before closing the door gently. They were on a mezzanine, with a washroom and more stairs leading to the upper level. The hum of the generator and equipment was louder now, but there was still no sign of any life, for which Dean was grateful.

  “How the hell does Baron Al get the fuel to run the generator all the time?” he asked of Danny.

  “I don’t really know. The weird thing is that fuel’s the one thing Charity’s never been short of for trade. I think h
e has some good trading allies for that, because he cultivated them. But that’s why he’s in the shit over the lack of food. He’s been too busy chasing this dream to look out for the people he rules over. Which is kinda dumb in the long run, ’cause there’s more of them than there are of him and his sec.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dean answered, not bothering to add that he had seen fear rule over many a ville, and numbers and manpower weren’t necessarily the most important things.

  They took the last few steps from the mezzanine to the upper story, and Danny opened the wooden door at the top, pausing only to check the room before turning to Dean with a huge grin on his face.

  “Welcome to wonderland,” he said, ushering Dean into the room.

  “Hot pipe!” Dean whistled, all other words failing him at the sight with which he was greeted.

  The room ran the length of the building, and like the floor below was open plan. Rich velvet drapes and hangings ran around the walls, blocking the windows and giving the room an altogether richer, warmer feel. The floor space was occupied by vast banks of comps, vids and other electronic pieces the use of which was, at this moment, a mystery to Dean. In front of the drapes in one corner stood a row of battered old metal filing cabinets, with an ornate wooden writing desk to one side of them.

  “This,” Danny said, encompassing the old tech with a gesture, “is the hardware. But that—” he pointed with his Uzi to the filing cabinets “—is where the real treasure lay, I’d say. I didn’t pay it much attention back in the day, ’cause I was only young. But now…that’s a different matter. I’d say that those drawers probably contain all the secrets to make this stuff viable again. And that, my friend, is where we should be looking.”

  He strode across the room, pointedly ignoring the winking lights and gentle hum of the comp consoles, and the flickering images that played again and again on vid and terminal screens. Dean followed him, although he couldn’t help but be distracted by the old tech equipment, the likes of which had always held a fascination for him. Some of it he recognized from redoubts, or from the Brody school, where there had been a certain amount of old tech that some of the teachers had tried to teach to the students, most of whom had more pressing concerns. But, like his father, Dean had always had an interest. Ryan had always been fascinated by the snippets of preDark culture that he could find, almost as though he could somehow unravel the secrets of the past and use them to make the present better for himself. Without anything ever being said between them, Dean had always shared this interest, with a more practical bent toward the old tech.