Hellbenders

by James Axler

  “Dean, come and take a look at this,” Danny said softly. Dean stopped poring over the console of a terminal, trying to get into the programming, and hurried over to the writing desk, where Danny had a pile of books and papers that he had taken from the filing cabinets, and which may or may not relate to the electronics in the room.

  Dean looked over Danny’s shoulder at the myriad of paper, covered with figures, sentences that looked almost incomprehensible in their complexity, and colorful drawings of the comps along with diagrams of their schematics.

  “It’s all here,” Danny said, not without a note of awe in his voice, “but the trouble is working out which bit belongs to which. I wasn’t old enough then to really get a grip on any of the theory, but it strikes me now that although the boxes and circuits are working, it’s the stuff that makes it all work—software, wasn’t it?—that’s the problem. Sometimes, you can’t immediately tell what each comp has running it, and how to connect them to each other.”

  Dean nodded. “I know what you mean. The problem is that not all the software recognizes each other, so you have to find ways of doing it. I was taught something about that…networking, Mr. Brody called it. He had a few old comp books.”

  “Did it work?” Danny looked at him with eyes glittering intently. The young man had forgotten about the world of Charity and the Deathlands outside the room, forgotten about their companions in the recce party, forgotten about any dangers that may be facing them. All that mattered to him now was that he may be close to cracking the secrets of the comps, and making them slaves rather than adversaries.

  “Yeah, not that we had much in the way of equipment,” Dean replied, catching the mood. “Listen, if we can find a couple of cables, I could show you quickly, and we could mebbe find out a little more about what Baron Al’s got here.”

  “Okay. What sort of cables do we need?” Danny asked, but Dean was already rooting around the hardware, emerging with a couple of connecting cables.

  “These,” he said. Then, indicating two of the comps, he added, “We’ll take those two. You connect that one.” He pointed to the one nearest Danny.

  “Sure,” the youngster replied enthusiastically, taking the cable. “How do you actually connect these things?”

  “You look for the right socket on the back,” Dean replied. “You put the male lead into the female port.”

  “What?”

  Dean smiled. “You never heard that? The triple stupes who invented these things had male and female ends to them. The male is the one with prongs, and the female—”

  “Is the one with the hole,” Danny finished, shaking his head. “Shit, with jokes like that, no wonder they tried to blow up the fucking world.”

  With the two comps connected, the young men hunched over them, each keeping an eye on his terminal while Dean tapped in commands to try to identify the software on each, and get them to communicate.

  “This may not work,” he said to Danny. “We really need more time for this. We should wait until we get back to the redoubt,” he continued, beginning to feel the pressure of being stuck in enemy territory.

  “Best to find out as much as possible now, and take as much of the paperwork,” Danny said firmly.

  “Why?”

  “Because…” Danny began, then stopped. He looked at Dean in a completely different manner from any way he’d looked at him before, as though he were assessing how much he could tell him. Finally, he decided. “Because I don’t trust Papa Joe, that’s why. See, he’s spent so long with nothing to do except dwell on revenge that I figure he’ll go over the top when he gets his hands on Baron Al. If it don’t chill him, or everyone else, in the attempt, then he’ll torch the ville, and all this’ll be lost. And this is the future. But he’s spent so long brooding over revenge that I reckon he may just be a little loco by now.”

  Dean nodded briefly. “I figure most of us feel the same. Trouble is, we’ve got to go through with it because he outnumbers us…if you’re with us on this.”

  Danny smiled. “Figure it’s the other way around.”

  But the smile was driven from his face when a voice from behind them caused them both to whirl round in shock.

  “I figure it doesn’t matter which way around you want it, ’cause neither of you may get out of here alive—especially if you get smart,” the voice added as Dean went for his Hi-Power.

  He let his hand drop as their adversary, now stepping from behind one of the drapes, showed herself. Danny cursed. That was always his hiding place, and he should have figured on checking that one.

  Chapter Ten

  Apart from the fact that she was holding an old Thompson submachine gun—immaculately polished but still with a dulled air of danger about the gray gunmetal—and had a set, hard expression, Dean would never have imagined her to be a threat. But threat she most certainly was. He carefully withdrew his hand from his holstered Hi-Power.

  “It’s okay, don’t panic. I’m just taking my hand away, okay?”

  “I can see that, stupe, I’m not blind,” she spit pithily, without changing her expression.

  “Shit, I can’t believe that I was that much of a stupe not to check it out,” Danny said, ignoring the other two and banging his hand down on the bench that held the comp. At the sudden slap, the girl turned the barrel of her Thompson away from Dean, and the young Cawdor reached immediately for the Browning. Catching this from the corner of her eye, she swung the machine blaster back toward Dean, but not before he had the Browning clear of the holster and leveled in her direction.

  “Stalemate?” he questioned, echoing something his father had said a few days before.

  “Mebbe…mebbe not. What’s to stop me blasting you now?”

  “You don’t want the sec coming in here. If we’re not supposed to be here, then neither are you, right?” he asked, directing the last toward Danny.

  “Nice try, dude, but it won’t work,” Danny replied, shaking his head slowly. “Not if that’s who I think it is.”

  “And who’s that?” Dean shot back, his confidence rattled.

  Danny looked the girl up and down. She was about fifteen, dressed in a cropped T-shirt with sequins that clung to the swell of her breasts and left exposed a tanned and taut abdomen. Her jeans were old denim, bleached and ripped by use, but sewn through with golden threads. On her feet she wore exquisite velvet pumps that had enabled her to move quietly, but also suggested that she hadn’t come from a great distance, or that she was used to roughing it across rough ground.

  “She’s a few years older now, and a shitload more beautiful—”

  “That ain’t gonna pull no weight,” she interrupted.

  Danny held up his hands. “Who says I was trying to? Mebbe I mean it. But you are, aren’t you?”

  Her face split into a lopsided grin but the blaster remained steady. “Yeah, and I remember you, too. Hell, you were the reason I learned to get in here. You were how I learned to get in here! Never thought I’d see you again, Danny.”

  Dean sighed, and looked to the ceiling. “You know, I’m sure this is all fine and dandy for you two, but seeing as we’re standing here at blasterpoint and we may get interrupted any second, it’d be kind of nice if someone told me what the hell was going on?”

  Danny cut to the chase. “Her name’s Ayesha, and she’s Baron Al’s youngest sprog. Only daughter, too. Hence the fine clothes and the ability to carry such a fancy blaster. But not why she’s here.”

  Her brow furrowed. “In what way?”

  “Well, I remember what Baron Al was like, right? Now, I may have been away awhile, but I’d be willing to bet my life that the old bastard hasn’t changed that much. And the two things he was sure of were that he didn’t like girls hanging around anything important, and that this place was out of bounds to everyone in the whole damn ville unless he was with them.”

  Ayesha pursed her lips. “Fuck it,” she said softly. “I guess you’ve got me there.” But her grip on the machine blaster didn’t w
aver.

  “Okay,” Dean said carefully, starting to get a little weary of the situation. “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. We’re not supposed to be here, and you’re not supposed to be here, and we’re all in the shit if we get found. Am I right?”

  Ayesha nodded agreement.

  “Right,” Dean continued, “so I reckon it’d be better for all of us if you put that blaster down and we started from there. It’s not going to do any of us any good if we get snuck up on by the sec because we’re so busy eyeballing each other. Am I right again?”

  Reluctantly, the girl lowered the Thompson. “Guess so,” she said simply.

  There was an almost palpable lowering of tension in the room.

  Dean returned his attention to the cables, linking them and tapping a few commands into the keyboard of the comp he was manning as he said, “So I guess you know why we’re here. You were listening, right?” he added to her quizzical expression as he looked up. “So you know about Correll, the Hellbenders and everything?”

  “Kinda,” she answered. “I didn’t know that they existed. I figured—like everyone else here, I guess—that once all you guys disappeared into the desert, then that was it. Time to buy the farm.”

  “Should have been,” Danny agreed, “but I guess we got lucky.” Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep the slightest tinge of cynicism from invading the latter statement.

  Ayesha seized on it. “I heard what you were saying about Correll being obsessed…mebbe he is, but mebbe that’s a good thing.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve got reasons.”

  Dean moved over to the other comp and tapped in a few commands on that keyboard. “Check it out,” he said, trying to bring the conversation back onto some kind of track. “They’re networking, Danny.”

  “Shit!” The teenager’s attention was immediately taken by the old tech. He looked at the monitor. “Sweet fuckin’ murder, you’ve actually done it. How the hell did you do that?” he added, glancing at Dean.

  “If you were paying more attention to this than to her, then you’d know,” Dean said in an acid tone. “Now look, I can show you how to do this when we get back to the redoubt, as long as we have these,” he continued, detaching the cables and putting them in his backpack along with a sheaf of papers from those Danny had taken from the filing cabinet. “That isn’t a problem. Getting out of here and back to the rendezvous in one piece is—especially now that we have this little problem.” He indicated Ayesha.

  “She’s not a problem,” Danny said softly. “Shit, I can remember when I used to sneak about in here and I’d see her sometimes with Baron Al, if she was tagging along with him. And then I’d see her in his palace, when I was with my dad. She’s only a kid, Dean.”

  “With a big blaster,” the young Cawdor pointed out.

  “Mebbe, but—”

  “But nothing, you stupe,” Ayesha butted in. “Listen, you think I never saw you when you were hiding here? I always wondered how you got in, what you wanted. I used to follow you. Why the fuck do you think I come here now? Because I got interested in trying to use this shit, that’s why.”

  “But you never gave me away,” Danny said, incredulously.

  “Of course not, you fuckwit. I was fascinated by you, and then by this. I wanted to learn, I wanted to come out and tell you I was watching. And now you’re here with this story about these guys called Hellbenders—”

  “No story—it’s truth,” Danny said quickly.

  “Whatever, it’s come at just the right time.”

  At first, neither Dean nor Danny caught her meaning. Then it dawned on the young Cawdor, who said slowly, “You mean your own father would sell you?”

  She nodded. “Hell yeah. I’m a big prize to those cold-heart bastards. Daughter of a baron and not yet been screwed? Prize meat and big jack…the full shit. That’s why I haven’t chilled you or called sec. I could always make some excuse about seeing someone come in here and following them in, if it came to it. No, I’ve got other ideas. What do you say we make a bargain?”

  “What kind?” Dean asked.

  “You’re gonna be mounting a raid on the convoy, right? Well, when you do, you make sure that me and the girls get away—the wag we’re being carried in gets left alone and we get the chance to make a run.”

  “You’ve heard what Danny said about Correll,” Dean replied, shaking his head. “I can’t make guarantees about someone like that.”

  “That’s okay.” She shrugged. “You do what you can. It’s a better chance than we’d have anyway.”

  “Okay, so that’s what you get. What about us?” Danny questioned.

  “You get to get away from here right now.” She smiled. “I can guarantee you safe passage to wherever the hell you want to go. And when the raid takes place, you don’t have to worry about the wag with the girls as I’ll take care of the sec.”

  Dean eyed the Thompson and tried to figure the chances on the sec guard being back on duty at the place where they had made their entry. He looked at Danny. “I figure we could go for that, right?”

  Danny assented. “Not that we get a lot of choice,” he added, giving Ayesha a look that suggested he was quite happy with that option.

  She grinned. “That’s settled, then. So if you’ve finished frigging around with all those cables, I figure we’d better get our asses out of here triple sharp.”

  “Any reason?” Dean queried as he shouldered his backpack.

  “Way things are at the moment, my beloved father has been taking solace in this building, away from the troubles outside. He’s really gone into himself, and turns up here at all hours of the day and night. It’s okay for me, ’cause I can use all the hiding places, but three of us trying to hide in here may get a touch noticeable.”

  “Fair point,” Dean agreed. “So how do we get out of here?”

  “Not the same way you got in, if you’re still using that stupe method you used to,” Ayesha remarked to Danny.

  “Sounds like it served you well enough,” he countered, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  “That was until I found this,” she returned with a grin. “Follow me.”

  Leaving them almost in her wake, Ayesha turned, shouldering the Thompson as she did, and made her way toward the door they had used on the way in. She paused at the mezzanine, listening for any sec that may be outside, on the main factory floor. There was no sound.

  Unwilling to speak in the quiet, in case it reverberated and in some way alerted anyone outside, Dean gave her a questioning expression. Ayesha returned it with a smile, and beckoned them on with a crooked index finger.

  Opening the door, she went onto the fire escape, which led to the mezzanine from the floor of the old building, but instead of continuing down the staircase, she swung herself over it and hung underneath. Once there, holding herself by one hand, she opened a window that should have been barred and covered like the others.

  And so it would appear from the outside, but the nails that had held the thin metal covering sheet in place had long since oxidized into rust, and it had been simple for Ayesha to prise the sheet loose. Dean wondered why and how she had discovered this, but decided that now wasn’t the time to ask such questions.

  The sheet swung, pivoted on one nail, revealing an open frame to the outside that was high enough above eye level not to be noticeable unless you looked up, and faced onto the alleyway at the side of the building, where there was little chance of anyone passing by, and where the sec men, softened by years of inactivity, never thought to look.

  Ayesha swung herself through, balancing on the frame as she reached out to pull at a silken thread that hung close to the wall. This was attached to an old fire-escape ladder of the retractable sort, which should in theory have been rusted up and noisy to extend.

  The manner in which she turned and winked at them before pulling the thread suggested that she had returned several times under the cover of darkness to grease
the metal. The ladder extended swiftly and silently to the ground. Ayesha swung herself out onto the ladder, and beckoned the two young men to follow with a gesture. Dean was first, negotiating the obstacle with ease and coming out onto the ladder. Danny was a little more hesitant, but gritted his teeth and followed. When both of them were on the ladder, Ayesha leaned across and pulled the metal sheet into place. She covered the alleyway as Dean and Danny dropped down to the ground, and then followed them, sending the ladder back up to its destination with a tug of the cord. When the ladder had settled, the cord hung limply against the wall, and if anyone had noticed it, they would have assumed nothing more than that it was just a piece of old twine hanging from part of a decaying and disused building.

  Ayesha led the way to the front of the old building, checking that the sec man on duty was paying little attention to the side, and then beckoned the two youths to follow her as she slipped onto the thoroughfare which, although by no means crowded, was busy enough for them to get lost in quite easily.

  “That wasn’t at all bad,” Danny sniffed dismissively.

  “Bad nothing, you stupe bastard,” Ayesha snapped back. “I’d like to see you do better. That method you had of getting in—you went by the old tunnel, right?—is so frigging dangerous. Second time I tried it I nearly got caught, and I vowed that I’d find a better way then.”

  “So how the hell did you find that the window barrier was loose in that position?” Dean asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

  She shrugged. “It let in light where it wasn’t tight anymore. Saw it one day when I was trying to get in—trying to avoid the sec by going your way,” she added with a grin directed at Danny. “Just had to take a look at the outside, see where the window came out. It was perfect.”