Hellbenders

by James Axler

“We hurried to the front of the arena, where Jak joined us, and it was simple task to gain entry without being seen.

  “Inside the arena, on the space that would once have been occupied by the grassy field of play, there was a sea of churned up and rutted mud and dust, the mud no doubt caused by spillages of water and wag fuel used by the mechanics.

  “And this is where it becomes a matter of some concern to us. There are twelve wags in the Charity convoy, one of which looks large enough to convey the body of women that are to be the prize for Summerfield. There is another, armored wag that will carry the jack. Of the others, four are for the transfer and safe return to Charity of the crops and supplies that Baron Al is purchasing. The others are sec wags, and they are a formidable sight.

  “Six wags, all of them armored and reinforced with the addition of metal shielding and wire mesh across the windows to make it hard for any grens to be thrown into them. They are mounted internally with a variety of machine blasters, and two appear to have rocket launchers also fitted. They were covered with a swarm of filthy, sweat-be-grimed mechanics, who are working flat out to prepare them.

  “There was a heavy sec presence within the arena, but such is the work rate being demanded of the mechanics that they were being pressed into action to help mount blasters and carry cans of fuel and boxes of ammo to and from the central stores, which seems to be located under the main stand. It did cross my mind that to knock out this stand would be to cripple their operation, but I was vetoed by Lonnie on this notion. I fear a head-to-head conflict would be a necessity for the Hellbenders to achieve satisfaction, no matter how else the result could be achieved.

  “We were able to secrete ourselves around the arena and make notes and observations, and also to hide in plain sight among the sec and mechanics. It is such chaos as they struggle to meet the deadline imposed on them that the firefight to come may be aided by their inability to ensure the full working order of every wag and blaster.

  “Having achieved our objective, retreat was a simple matter, as was regaining the rendezvous. The rest you know.”

  Doc finished his story, and Dean contemplated it in silence as they continued across the hot desert, keeping watch on an empty horizon and praying for dusk to fall.

  It would be interesting to see what Ryan made of this, as compared to Papa Joe.

  Chapter Twelve

  It took less than two days to make the return journey, the recce party hastened by its initial trip into the desert during daylight hours. When night fell, they were glad to rest up, dehydrated and overheated by the rigors of the day’s march. After building a fire, they ate and then slept while a watch rotated, rising with the dawn the next morning to complete the trip back to the hidden redoubt.

  The last few hours, those spent scaling the winding road that stuttered in and out of existence around the side of the mountain, were in many ways the worst, as they found themselves making a journey upward in the blazing sun, the incline and the heat conspiring to draw any strength that was left from their calf and thigh muscles, each step weighing heavy and dragging what little energy they had from their bodies.

  Apart from the sheer hard slog of it, the journey had been uneventful. There had been no more giant worms to disturb their passage, no packs of wild cats luring them into a feeding frenzy trap and certainly no other humans or muties such as stickies who were traversing the vast wastes of dust-blown desert, either on foot or by wag. They had been completely alone, and this sense of desolation hadn’t added to the ease of the journey, making them feel as though they were the only people left alive. By the time they had reached the small plateau of rock shelf that stood before the camouflaged entry to the redoubt, they felt as though this may actually be true. Doc, already partly delirious from the heat and the dehydration, was sure that this was so, and that those who accompanied him were mere shades—ghosts of those he had set off with, but who had perished along the way. Within the recesses of his mind, Doc was aware that he was starting to lose the thin thread of sanity, the silken cord to which he desperately clung, and prayed fervently that they would soon attain the air-conditioned cool, the water and food sources of the redoubt, and that he would be able to rest and recover, grasping once more that silken thread.

  “Sec cameras should have got us on the last turn,” Lonnie remarked to Dean, Jak and Doc as they walked—more shuffled after the last grueling ascent—toward the large sec doors set in the rock face. “There should be a party waiting for us.”

  His assumption was proved correct. As they came within a few yards of the doors, they began to open, scrolling upward to reveal a party of Hellbenders, accompanied by Ryan and Mildred, and headed by Correll himself.

  “Weren’t expecting you back so soon,” he said briefly. “Must’ve been a hell of a journey.” Gesturing to the rear of him, he indicated that two of the party go forward to assist Doc, whose will to carry on had collapsed now that the doors were open. The old man was buckling at the knees, and Travis and Rudi rushed forward to support him, closely followed by Mildred.

  “Jeez, you old coot, you can’t keep doing this at your age,” she whispered to him as she checked his vital signs quickly before indicating to Travis with a nod that they transfer him to the med lab.

  Doc was able to spare her a distant smile. “Not bad for someone breaching a third century, though, my dear doctor….”

  “No, mebbe,” she replied, ignoring the puzzled looks of Travis and Rudi. As she said nothing by way of explanation, they put it down to the ravings of sunstroke, and disappeared down the tunnel, transporting the ailing Doc.

  Correll watched them go, then turned back to the rest of the recce party. “You’ve done well,” he said briefly. “To be truthful, I didn’t figure on the old man coming back with you. Shows guts. But all that counts for shit if you didn’t get results.”

  “Oh, we got results all right,” Lonnie said, replying as leader of the recce mission. “Full details of the wags Baron Al’s sending out, some old tech stuff that the boys picked up—we got separated, and they ended up taking an alternative route—and what’s more, we’ve got ourselves an ally in the convoy.”

  Correll tried to stay impassive, but Ryan noticed that he stiffened at this last sentence, as though a raging torrent of conflicting emotions were running through his mind and body, and he was fighting to keep them under control. A vein on the side of his neck throbbed, causing an eyebrow to twitch, and the one-eyed man guessed that Correll’s blood pressure had just shot out there past the bloated, rad-red sun.

  But despite this, the Hellbenders’ leader fought to keep an even tone in his voice as he said, “Okay. We debrief in forty-five. You take a shower, eat and drink, then meet me in the office.” With which brief utterance he turned and walked back down the tunnel, leaving the rest of them standing in the hot desert sun.

  “Aw shit, doesn’t sound like he’s happy about that,” Mik complained, the whining tone returning to his voice after so long.

  “How can you tell?” Ryan queried.

  Tilly shrugged. “If he wasn’t pissed, he would have had us debrief without the option of showering and eating first. Guess he needs to cool off and get himself together before tackling this. It’s unexpected, and Papa Joe doesn’t like unexpected.”

  “Not even when it’s good,” Danny finished in a flat tone.

  Ryan pondered that as the recce party wearily passed him on its way back down into the redoubt. If Correll was resistant to any changes in his plans, that could cause problems later, when they had to go into combat. As Jak passed, at the end of the line and still looking fit comparatively, his red eyes met Ryan’s monocular gaze.

  “You think what I do?” he said quietly, knowing that his own observations on the exchange that had just taken place would be the same as those of the one-eyed man.

  Ryan gave a brief nod. “We’ll talk about it later, in privacy.”

  Jak returned the nod and proceeded down the tunnel without looking back.

&nbs
p; Ryan was left standing alone on the plateau in front of the sec doors, the rest of the recce party and the welcoming group having retreated. He stared out at the vast expanse of desert in front, stretching to where Charity lay, beyond the horizon.

  It was going to be an interesting debriefing.

  IT TOOK the recce party just under an hour to shower, change into clean and cool clothing, and eat and drink enough to bring back up their water and salt levels, both of which had been depleted by the long trek. Doc had showered with them, and then eaten in the med lab, where Mildred had monitored him and put him on a saline drip she had found in the well-stocked lab. That restored Doc’s body, and enabled his brain chemistry to regain its delicate balance.

  At the end of an hour, the recce party had reassembled in the office that Correll used as his base of operations. The walls were decorated with maps and diagrams, and new ones had been added over the course of the preceding two days as he ran through new plans for staging the attack. As he sat there, behind the large desk that had, at one time, housed the military commander of the redoubt back in the days of the Totality Concept, he toyed with a pencil that had been sitting on a piece of paper on the otherwise bare desktop.

  Lonnie, Mik, Tilly, Danny, Dean and Jak were joined by a refreshed Doc, with Mildred along to keep an eye on him. Also in the room were Ryan, Krysty and J.B., as well as a select few of the Hellbenders who were obviously Correll’s high command: Rudi, Travis, Jenny and the injured Cy, who—although still in no fit state for combat—had been a longtime and highly trusted associate of the Hellbenders’ leader. His shoulder was heavily bound, but the fact that he was up and about was a testimony both to the skills of Mildred and her assistant, Travis, and the fact that the redoubt’s med lab had still been well stocked, and the remaining supplies well maintained by the highly disciplined group.

  Correll fixed Lonnie with a cold eye. “So tell me about the convoy,” he said simply.

  “I will, but first you’ve got to know what happened when we arrived, as it leads on to why we’ve got the extras,” Lonnie began.

  And so he began to explain the events of the previous day, beginning with their entry into Charity. He left nothing out of the account, bearing the withering and angry stare of his leader when he explained about Jem, and the reasons why the group became separated. But this was soon forgotten as he got into the details of what they had seen in the old sports arena, and reeled off the full specifications of the amount of wags that would be used in the convoy, and the extent of the armory that they would carry. Correll’s pencil moved rapidly across the paper, making notes. Not many people were able to read and write, for education was the last thing that most needed in order to survive, and so came well down the list of priorities. The fact that Correll seemed to be able to write so rapidly and fluently suggested that he had, at one time, received an education exceptional by Deathlands standards, and once more Ryan wondered about the full story behind the driven man.

  When Lonnie had finished his description of the potential convoy, he handed the account over to Danny, who explained why he had led Dean to Baron Al’s secret stash of old tech—leaving out his explanation to Dean about not trusting Correll to keep his cool in the heat of confrontation—and so to the appearance of Ayesha.

  As he explained the agreement he had reached with the girl, and how she had accompanied them back to the rendezvous point, he began to falter, sensing the growing anger in the Hellbenders’ leader, and noticing how Correll’s tightly compressed lips were a deathly white, all color bled from them.

  He began to stammer so badly that Lonnie, sensing trouble ahead and wishing to avert it if only for his own sake, as recce patrol leader, took over and detailed the agreement he had reached with the girl, and stressing his view that she could be trusted because she was desperate to get away.

  When he had finished, Correll gave the briefest of nods, and when he spoke his voice was strangulated by the desire to keep it even.

  “So we know the strength of the Charity force, now,” he began. “We can assume that Summerfield will match that, as they sure as shit have spies in each other’s camps. What they don’t know about is us, and what we’ve got. Jenny? J.B.?”

  The Native American and the Armorer exchanged glances. J.B. had spent some time during the day examining the collection of wags housed in the old garages of the redoubt. Some of them were vehicles that had been used by escapees as they drove across the desert and found the redoubt, or had been found by Hellbender scouting patrols, and others were the wags that had been in the redoubt since before skydark. Some of these were just transport wags, which the community had been refitting using weapons from the armory; others were purpose-built attack and defense wags, heavily armored and armed. J.B. expressed his opinion that these would be more than a match for the cobbled-together wags of Charity, if—and he stressed the word—the tactics were right. Despite their superior firepower and the element of surprise, they would be outnumbered by the combined convoys of both villes, and so keeping their flanks protected was a must.

  Correll nodded his agreement. “I’ve taken all of that into account,” he said simply. “The final battle plans will be drawn tonight. The convoys will rendezvous in less than forty-eight hours. I want everyone in the base to get a good night’s sleep, ’cause we’re sure as hell gonna have to be wide awake and full at ’em tomorrow. Group briefing will be at sunup tomorrow.”

  With which, he dismissed the group gathered in his office and returned to his papers, scribbling furiously and muttering incoherently to himself as they left him.

  While the Hellbender group went off to their own rooms and immediate companions, Ryan gathered his people together.

  “Back to our space, and I think we may just need our own briefing first,” he said softly.

  It was something with which the others could all concur, and when they reached the office space that doubled as their living quarters, Jak took guard by the door, keeping one ear on Ryan while he made first watch.

  “So I’ve heard Lonnie’s and Danny’s view of things—what do you think?” he asked of Doc and Dean.

  By turns, they expressed opinions that differed little from those already heard, Dean adding the all-important coda of the opinion Danny expressed concerning Correll’s ability to keep calm and focused in the heat of battle.

  “Yeah, I’d kind of figured that one out myself,” the one-eyed man said wryly. “I’m not too sure of anyone else other than Danny has that opinion, though…and that could make things difficult in the middle of a firefight.”

  “The only thing we can do is keep triple alert for when it starts to happen and have plans of our own,” the Armorer added.

  Ryan agreed. “That’s why I wanted this. What do we think of the setup here? J.B.?”

  The Armorer considered this for some time. “The weapons have been well kept, and the wags are maintained well. There’s a good supply of ammo and grens—better than I’ve seen for a long time. The hardware won’t be a problem. There’s enough to go around and then some. It’s a question of whether they can use it.”

  “They can,” Krysty interjected. “They’ve got good blaster sense and know exactly when not to fire. But the thing that worries me is that they’re arrogant—not in an obvious way, but because they’ve been isolated for so long that it seems like Correll’s hyped them up to a point where they really believe they’re unbeatable.”

  Mildred agreed. “They can shoot well, but they can’t take the idea of someone being better than them. So if they come up against forces that are better in a firefight, some of them might go to pieces.” Although she didn’t add any names, Mildred thought of the blond Catherine, who had tried to make her look stupid in front of Rudi.

  “Same goes for unarmed combat,” Krysty mused. “You saw it yourself,” she said to Ryan, before going on to detail her experiences with Juan.

  “It would seem to me,” Doc commented with a degree of humor, “that we are dealing with a communit
y that is a trifle unstable—and if anyone is qualified to see that, then it must be me. I fear they have been in isolation and infected with the good Mr. Correll’s brooding on perceived wrongs.”

  “And that’s what makes them dangerous,” Ryan finished. “They’re like a damaged gren that could go off in your face as soon as the enemy’s.”

  He turned to Dean. “You reckon we can trust Danny to be with us if we have contingency plans?”

  “Yeah. All Danny really wants to do is spend his time messing around with old tech and trying to get to the bottom of it…and mebbe spend the time doing that with Ayesha helping him.”

  “And can she be trusted?”

  Dean shrugged. “Who can say? It’s kind of hard to get an idea about her just from a couple of hours, but I’m sure she wants to get out of that convoy alive and not be a slave to Summerfield. And I’m also pretty sure that she’d pretty much like to spend all her time messing with old tech as well—especially if Danny’s around.”

  Ryan grinned. “I guess that’s a yes—but has she got the capability?”

  “Provided the other women in the wag don’t turn against her, then yeah—she’s hard.”

  “They aren’t going to stop her,” Mildred added. “Turn away from a chance to get free and not be a slave? That’s got to be worth risking a chilling.”

  Ryan sucked on his hollow tooth thoughtfully. “Okay. Problem is that we can’t make any plans of our own until we know what Correll has mapped out—and by then, we probably won’t get a chance to get together and work out an alternative.”

  “We should try and keep together as much as possible,” J.B. said. “Keep close contact.”

  “May not be that easy,” Krysty mused. “Correll’s not a stupe—he wants our abilities, but he won’t trust us enough so soon as to let us keep together.”

  “Then we’re just gonna have to try and mess with those plans in the heat of the moment,” Ryan mused. “Play it as it comes.”

  Jak, who had been silent up to that point while he kept watch and listened at the same time, turned his face to the others in the room. His scarred face was set and serious, but there was a light in his eyes that may have been amusement, or may just have been the anticipation of a hunt.