Hellbenders

by James Axler

  “We can’t do that,” Claudette answered. “If we even make an effort to do that, then we’re in the shit. We can’t step out of here holding blasters, and these mothers will have to have some to make it look convincing, otherwise we bring the whole of the sec down on us.”

  “There has to be a way around this,” Ayesha said, picking up the shackles and looking at them. On a close inspection, she could see that the cuffs could be left unlocked and uncoupled without it appearing too obvious. She looked at the other women. “Are you with us or against us?” she asked.

  The majority of them agreed, glad of any opportunity to try to escape. Those who were initially unwilling reluctantly agreed when they saw they were outvoted. Even Anita grudgingly agreed between spitting out mouthfuls of blood and sobbing.

  “Okay, here’s what we do,” Ayesha said. “We take the blasters and conceal them, leaving these assholes with one empty blaster that they can wave around. We go out with the shackles undone, and when it all goes down we head back for the wag and secure it. That sound good?”

  “It sounds risky,” Claudette stated, “but it’s better than anything I’ve come up with, so it’ll have to do.”

  “Ya know, babe, I don’t think we’re in any position to worry about it,” Ayesha said. “We’ll just have to roll with it.”

  Claudette shrugged, and was just about to comment when the voice of Baron Al crackled over the radio. “The rendezvous point is in sight. The Summerfield convoy is there, and it looks like we’ve got a dust storm brewing.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Correll looked up and sniffed the air. He was standing beside his wag, and had been there ever since the distant rumble of an approaching convoy had been detected. The rumble had gotten nearer and finally ground to a halt, the wag engines just ticking over as the Summerfield convoy stood inert at the entrance to the arena, waiting for the rival convoy to arrive. From the opposite direction, a different pitch of noise signaled the approach of the Charity convoy.

  Ryan joined Correll and looked up at the skies.

  “Storm,” he said simply.

  Correll nodded assent. “That’ll be good. We may be determined, but we are outnumbered. Mebbe the confusion will even the odds for us.”

  Ryan agreed. “We know who we’re attacking. They won’t be sure what the hell is going on.”

  Correll allowed himself the ghost of a smile, which seemed oddly out of place on his gaunt countenance, and for one second gave the one-eyed man an insight into the man Correll may once have been.

  But before it could go any further, Catherine came running up to Correll.

  “Papa Joe, they’re all in place. Should I send the lookouts up?”

  Correll’s face once again became grim and set as he nodded before turning and mounting the wag once more. Ryan, left standing, followed the small blonde as she ran back to the wag in which she had traveled. It was the one in which Dean, Jak, Doc and Danny had also journeyed. That meant that only J.B. and Mildred would be attacking from the other side, and be that much more isolated from their companions. But J.B. was more than just Ryan’s trusted lieutenant. The two men had spent so long fighting together that in many ways they thought as one, as well as fought as one.

  Ryan wondered who would be the lookout on that side of the divide. This side he figured was obvious.

  Catherine reached her wag and climbed aboard, looking across to Jak. “Let’s go,” she said to him as she took the radio handset from Lonnie and rapped the one word— “Search”—before ceasing transmission.

  The albino hunter rose from his seat with an effortless grace and took a portable handset from the blonde, who turned to him and said, “You know when?”

  Jak assented. “At point exchange—most vulnerable.”

  “Right.” She nodded. “Good luck.”

  Jak left the wag without another word, pausing only to clasp Dean’s hand. The next time they saw each other, the firefight would well and truly commence.

  Outside, in the narrow channel they were using as a hiding place, there was little space between the walls of rock and the sides of the wags, and Jak skipped down between them, away from Ryan as he stood watching. The albino hunter was searching for a good place to begin his climb. He found it just past the rear wag, where there was a small split in one of the rocks that gave him a good hand- and toehold. Hoisting himself up, Jak began to scale the rock, which rose for forty feet and was almost sheer.

  The sandstone was soft and inclined to crumble, so the ascent was slower than the youth would have liked, each hold having to be tested for weight before he placed himself at its mercy. The quality of the rock was of concern to him. When he reached the summit of the rock, and was observing the trade-off below, he had to be careful that no stray gravel, rocks or pebbles be dislodged and alert the enemy below of his presence.

  But he would worry about that when he reached the peak. Right now he was faced with the problem of the ascent, for the rock veered out slightly. He arched his back a few degrees to make the handhold, feeling the pull of the earth below. The extra effort made him break into a sweat, and the muscles in his arms and across his shoulders tensed and cramped at the extra strain. He was fortunate that the foothold was solid and deep, so that he could plant his combat boot firmly and take the strain in his calf and thighs.

  One deep breath, one pull of his upper torso and it was done. He was over the worst and up to the summit.

  The surface on top of the rock was uneven and jagged, and Jak was faced with the problem of trying to find a niche from which he could observe the happenings below without being himself easily spotted.

  The rock was about four feet in thickness, more than enough for him to walk and climb comfortably along its length. He kept low, trying to adhere to a winding path along irregular dips in the top of the rock.

  After a couple of yards, he found what he was looking for. The rock had a hollow carved out by erosion that formed a small observation post, the rock in front of the hollow enabling him to keep out of view, but also providing—via a split down the middle of the face—a window through which he could see the arena below. Jak settled himself into the hollow and looked through the gap, defining his field of vision. It was a wide area, and obscured only the very far ends of the arena.

  He settled onto his haunches, beginning the wait, wondering who his opposite number may be, and how he or she was faring.

  ON THE FAR SIDE of the arena, in the opposite channel, the word from Catherine had come over the radio in J.B.’s wag. The Armorer turned to Jenny, who had previously indicated her willingness to tackle the task of lookout.

  “Ready? he asked.

  The woman shrugged. “As I’ll ever be,” she replied before taking a handheld radio from Mildred and leaving the wag.

  Like Jak, she had to scan the sheer rock wall for a suitable place to begin her climb, and like the albino she was soon aware of the less than reliable nature of the rocks. She tested each hold thoroughly and hauled herself up the rock face. When she was about thirty feet up, she encountered a similar problem to Jak inasmuch as the rock seemed to curve out and over her. Unlike Jak, she didn’t keep climbing, but paused for a second, casting a shrewd eye along the rock wall. If she could climb sideways for a few feet, there was a flatter part of the rock that would be easier to ascend, so she shuffled sideways, reaching out for holds until she was able to get past the outward curve and once more go upward for the last ten feet or so of the rock face.

  When she reached the top, she turned and looked down along the length of the channel, and noticed something that Jak had missed during his ascent—the inward curve of the rock continued all the way along the length of the tunnel, suggesting that it acted as a tunnel for any storm forces that may hit the outcrop, the actual channel being caused by wind and sand erosion. She looked up to the gathering storm above and hoped that they would be able to leave the channel before the storm began to hit hard.

  Like Jak, she was able to pick her way
along the irregular pathway cut into the top of the rock and find herself a place to hide and observe.

  Now they had only to wait for the trade-off to begin.

  The lead wag from Charity stood at the entrance to the arena. Directly opposed was the lead wag from Summerfield. Both had their engines ticking over, both were waiting for the other to move first.

  “Come on,” Jenny whispered to herself as she watched them from her secured position. She looked up at the sky, and hoped they would move soon.

  IN THE SUMMERFIELD WAG, Baron Tad Hutter was feeling much the same. So, too, was Elias Tulk, but for different reasons.

  Hutter glanced up at the gathering sky and frowned. “That asshole Jourgensen better start moving soon, or else this storm is gonna make things impossible.”

  “Mebbe he’s waiting for you to make the first move,” Tulk said. “Mebbe you should, ’cause it sure looks as though he isn’t gonna.”

  “Shit, I don’t wanna give him any ground at all, but…” He indicated to Tulk to put the wag into gear and begin to edge into the arena.

  ON THE FAR SIDE, Baron Al Jourgensen watched as the lead wag from the Summerfield convoy started to move into the arena.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” he said simply, indicating for his own driver to begin.

  The two convoys began to move slowly toward the center of the arena, each moving at a crawl to try to keep pace with the other, neither side willing to reach the middle before the other. The problem being, where was the middle of the arena? The lead wags in both convoys, stop-starting in a stuttering procession, reached a point where they were about thirty yards apart when Hutter signaled to Tulk to stop. As his wag shuddered to a halt, so Jourgensen signaled his driver to stop.

  The two convoys now sat, facing each other, only thirty yards apart. They were both far enough into the arena for the rear wag in each train to be well within the boundaries of the openings in the outcrop. There was plenty of space behind each wag for the Hellbenders to pen them in before beginning their attack.

  From their promontory positions, Jak and Jenny watched the wags proceed with mixed feelings. Jak was immobile, his red eyes fixed on the two trains, waiting patiently. Jenny, on the other hand, was less than patient, shifting uncomfortably on her perch and dividing her attention between the convoys and the sky. She was careful not to disturb or dislodge any of the rocks that surrounded the small perch she had made for herself, but nonetheless found it difficult to remain motionless. She felt itchy for action of some kind as the minutes ticked by and no one moved in any of the wags.

  But that didn’t mean that nothing was happening.

  “GET THE WOMEN shackled and get them out in the open.” Baron Al’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “This is it, then,” Claudette said to Ayesha.

  The baron’s daughter nodded. “Let’s get this done, then.”

  “You’ll never get away with it, you do know that, don’t you?” said the sec man who had been riding shotgun. “Even if this attack from your so-called allies happens, chances are that you’ll all still buy the farm. Is that really what you want?” he added, directing this away from Ayesha and Claudette and toward the other women, who had picked the shackles from the floor and were starting to put them on without closing the mechanism—even the bloodstained Anita, who had tried to clean herself up with water from the wag’s supply rather than appear conspicuous. “Go through with it, keep your heads down, and all you’ll get is shafted by the men of Summerfield until you make them some babies. Is that so bad?”

  Ayesha shrugged. “Don’t you get it yet, stupe? We don’t want that. We don’t want to be told what to do. We want to have lives where we aren’t pieces of shit to be used and abused, and frankly we’d rather get chilled than go through with it. Your way we die a long slow death for sure. But we stick this out and fight, then mebbe we’ve got a chance of getting away. And that chance is worth more than you could ever give.”

  “That’s a lot of words to prepare to buy the farm,” he said quietly.

  “Which is something you would have done a long time ago if not for the fact that we need you to lead us out, so as not to look suspicious,” Claudette said harshly as she unloaded the Uzi. She tossed the empty blaster to him, and he caught it before it hit him full in the face. “You can take this, but remember that I’ve got a handblaster, and I can draw it real quick if I have to. Understand me?”

  He nodded. “There should be two sec men with you. Otherwise Baron Al’ll know something’s wrong straight away. Davey should have been the other one,” he added, with an indication of his head to where the chilled sec man was still slumped.

  “How inconsiderate of me to end his miserable fucking life, then,” Ayesha replied sarcastically. “The driver’ll just have to take his place. Will my lovely father spot that? I think not.” She explained, before the sec man had a chance to answer, “Because you all look alike to him. You’re just the scum that do his dirty work. So get your fat ass over here,” she said to the driver, signaling him to climb over the seats and join them in the rear of the wag.

  “Why?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Oh, a triple stupe, as well, eh?” Ayesha snapped. “You know as well as I do that the two guards wouldn’t both get out of the front of the wag. Everyone else in the convoy will expect one man from the rear, with the women, and one from the front, where he was riding shotgun. You’re replacing the boy from the rear is all. Now fucking move!” she yelled, gesturing with her knife.

  The driver clambered over the seat and slid into the rear of the wag, passing near to Claudette, who gave him a warning kick—hard—to dissuade him from any idea he may have of trying to attack her. But he was just a driver, and had figured that this would be the easiest ride in the convoy. He was now pissed off and frightened. If any of the things Ayesha had said about the Hellbenders were true, there was little chance of him getting back to Charity in one piece. But every moment he could stay alive was still of the utmost importance to him, and so he complied with her request.

  Ayesha gave him an empty blaster and joined Claudette in appearing to secure herself in the shackles. But she still had the knife in the palm of her hand; Claudette had a handblaster up the sleeve of her shirt, and some of the other women had the liberated blasters concealed about their bodies.

  “Do it now,” Ayesha snapped.

  The sec man in the front of the wag slid out of his seat, opening the door of the wag and jumping out, running around to the back and opening up the rear of the wag. Gesturing with the empty Uzi, he beckoned for the apparently shackled women to get out of the wag. This they did, with Ayesha in the lead and Claudette somewhere in the middle, looking behind her all the way to keep an eye on the driver who was acting as second sec guard. When they were all clear of the back door, the rear guard closed the door to hide the chilled body within from the eyes of the sec wag behind them.

  “Keep it hard,” Ayesha whispered to the other women, aware of the eyes from all the sec wags that were now trained on them. There was an immense pressure on them to appear “normal” as they were seemingly led to their exchange.

  “Same goes for you assholes, too,” Claudette added to the sec guards in an undertone.

  From the wags in front and behind, sec guards had appeared, climbing onto the roofs of their wags, and training their blasters on the opposing convoy. They didn’t look down at the procession of women as they passed.

  OVER IN THE OPPOSITE convoy, Hutter watched the women as they started to walk along the side of the convoy. He was almost visibly salivating as he caught sight of Ayesha. Tulk, seated beside him, could almost read his mind, and felt physically sick for a moment, until he considered the fate that was about to befall his baron.

  “Ready the men,” Hutter ordered, and Tulk gladly swung out of his seat and away from his loathed leader. He opened his door and jumped down from his wag, signaling to the other wags as he did so. Without the radio communications enjoyed by Jourgensen, Hutter had
to rely on something as basic as one man sending out a signal. But at that moment, having witnessed the expression on the baron’s face, Tulk was glad of that.

  At his signal, the sec men from Summerfield took their places on the wags, some keeping watch on their opposing number, others mounting guard over the primitive flamethrowers erected over the seed crops and supplies.

  FROM HIS POSITION on high, Jak watched the women being apparently led from the wag, and wondered what was going on. They were supposed to be in the wag that had brought them, and to secure it. He waited to see if Jenny would make a signal at this, suspecting that the Hellbenders wouldn’t care about a promise made to Ayesha in return for her help. When no signal to attack came, he wasn’t surprised.

  Jak’s dilemma now was what to do. Should he make the signal himself and precipitate the attack, or should he wait to see what Jenny would do before acting? He had a suspicion that she would leave it until the Summerfield sec were unloading their side of the trade, thus leaving everyone out in the open and much more vulnerable to attack and, much as he regretted what appeared to be selling Ayesha down the river, the hunter in him said that this course of action made much more sense.

  And yet he was wrong in part. Jenny had only had part of her attention on the movement below; the movement above was more immediately disturbing. The clouds had started to move violently, and the wisps of breeze were snaking down to begin stirring the dust around her.

  The change in air pressure made Jak look up, and he cursed softly to himself.

  DOWN ON THE ARENA FLOOR, Claudette looked up as she felt breeze stir her plaits, and then down at the whirling eddies of dust that started to move around her feet. Her eyes met Ayesha’s.

  “They better fuckin’ hurry,” she murmured.

  As the first load of seed crops were unloaded and the women readied themselves for the approach of the Summerfield sec, the dust began to rise from the floor of the arena to swirl around their lower legs.