Hellbenders

by James Axler

  “Shit!” cursed Jourgensen and Hutter, almost simultaneously.

  Again almost simultaneously, Jenny and Jak yelled into their handsets, “Go!” before beginning a rapid descent to the wags below.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The wind began to howl through the jagged gaps at the top of the rocks and swept through the entrances at each end of the arena, conflicting currents meeting in the center and lifting great whirling eddies of dust and grit that stung the eyes and coruscated the skin. The noise from the beginning storm was enough to drown out the sound of the wags hidden in the channels at each side as they gunned their engines into life and began to roll through the narrow rock tunnels to circle out of the exits, turn and make their initial attack.

  J.B. waited until Jenny had slid down the rock and into the wag, breathless and already covered in a thin film of dust from the atmosphere outside.

  “You okay?” Mildred asked her as the woman settled in her seat and coughed violently.

  Jenny nodded. “Yeah, just about. That’s a wicked dust storm blowing up out there, and I figure the worst of it may just blow through these holes, so we should get out as soon as possible.”

  “Get this thing going, John,” Mildred affirmed.

  “Already there,” J.B. muttered through clenched teeth as he moved the wag forward.

  It was going to be a delicate balance between speed and getting out of the channel in one piece. Already the storm had increased in intensity to such a degree that the sand and grit that had been churned up was hitting the windshield of the wag with a loud, clattering rain that threatened to pit the toughened sec glass that had been fitted on the preDark vehicle. But that wasn’t what worried J.B. The problem was that the rain was so dark and consistent that he couldn’t see where he was going. Funneled into the channel from the outside, the wind, sand and grit were forming a visibility barrier that was preventing him from really putting his foot down on the accelerator and getting the hell out of the tunnel. If he took the narrow passage too fast, he was running the risk of driving the wag straight into the rock and not only damaging the wag itself and risking vulnerability in the firefight to come, but also jamming the vehicle across the channel and blocking the wags behind from making progress.

  Sweat stood out on his forehead as he concentrated on keeping the vehicle straight, trying to define the darker shapes of the rock walls through the opaque mist of dust. He ground his teeth, keeping a foot poised on the brake to apply it the second it was necessary, while keeping pressure constant on the accelerator.

  “Chill, John,” Mildred muttered, “you’re doing fine.” But even as she said it she was aware, as was the Armorer, that the Hellbenders in the wag were impatient, their body language telling of the tension waiting to be unleashed.

  PERHAPS THEY WOULD have been less so if they had realized that Correll was encountering exactly the same problem trying to negotiate his way out of the opposing tunnel.

  The gaunt man had already started moving his wag before Jak was down and into the wag driven by Lonnie.

  “What’s hurry?” Jak said phlegmatically as he regained his seat.

  “I guess Papa Joe wants to get out of there before that storm gets too much,” Lonnie replied as he, too, set his wag in motion.

  “All very well, but we can’t risk too much speed in these conditions, not if we want to get out in one piece,” Danny pointed out.

  “You saying you don’t want to fight? After all this time, and when you finally get the chance?” Catherine posed aggressively. The small blonde was hyped up and agitated, moving on her seat in such a manner as to suggest that Danny would be the first to be chilled if he said a word out of place.

  For Dean and Jak, this attitude just brought home the problems the companions faced if they hoped to get out of this alive.

  Doc, however, had a few words that he hoped would calm the feisty blonde until the right time for action.

  “My dear girl, we all want to come out of this little contretemps without being chilled. And we want a chance to actually face the enemy. All young Danny was doing was pointing out the folly of more haste, less speed. It was not a reflection on his, or indeed our, courage.”

  Catherine looked at Doc, suddenly still in her seat. She carried with her a puzzled expression that told the others she had no idea what he was talking about, but at least it had opened the tap on her pent-up aggression, her confusion dissipating it.

  Dean tried not to smile. A second later, even this was forgotten.

  “Shit!” Lonnie yelled. “Rockfall!”

  He dipped and swerved the heavy wag as the boulders started to fall from above. The howling gale had dislodged more than just shale and loose gravel. Larger rocks and stones from the top of the rock wall had begun to tumble into the narrow channel, clattering onto the roofs and hoods of the wags, hitting the ground in front of them and causing the drivers to take evasive action.

  “Let us hope it leaves us enough space to negotiate this obstacle course and get out of here,” Doc muttered.

  Lonnie swung the wheel to try to dodge the obstacles, ignoring the loud bangs and crashes on the roof, hoping that they wouldn’t hit the windshield and shatter it.

  “Great, we’ll be fucked before we even get out of here,” Catherine murmured with disdain.

  “Have some faith in our pilot,” Doc returned.

  “Thanks,” Lonnie gritted, “but I’m not that sure that I have that much faith in the bastard storm.”

  IN THE LEAD WAG, Correll was also cursing the sudden rockfalls.

  “Fate could not do this to us—not when we have come so far, my love,” he yelled, addressing the box that still sat on his lap as he drove.

  He swerved his wag in and out of the falling rocks—those that he could see through the sudden dust storm that whipped against the windshield, obscuring his view of the track ahead.

  Ryan looked over at Krysty, whose hair was clinging to her scalp and neck as if it were trying to envelop her, the tendrils of Titian red curled around her pale flesh.

  “Hang on,” the one-eyed man muttered through clenched teeth. “We get through this, the rest of it is going to be easy.”

  She spared him a smile. “Or easier, at any rate,” she murmured.

  “Nuking hell, but the fates are on our side after all!” Correll exclaimed with a triumphant shout. “We’re out.”

  Looking through the windshield, Ryan could see that the violence of the storm appeared to have abated a little, as there was now sky and light visible through the particles of dust, dirt and rock that swirled in the air. They were clear of the tunnel, and Ryan braced himself as Correll put his foot down and took the wag out into the empty desert with a sudden burst of speed before swinging the wheel with an incredible force, turning the wag at a tight angle so that it almost lifted onto two wheels. He felt the force of the turn fling them all across the wag, heard the screech of the wag’s brakes as it complained in its very structure about the gravity-defying feats that were demanded of it.

  “Fireblast! I hope the other drivers are as good as you—otherwise we’ll lose wags like this,” he shouted at Correll.

  The gaunt man turned his head for a second and gave a ghoulish grin: “They can do it—I just hope J.B. is up to it.”

  THE ARMORER WAS ASKING himself the same thing at almost the same moment. There hadn’t been the rockfalls to contend with in their channel, the upper level of the rock being a little more secure, but the storm had clouds of the dust and dirt whipped up and flung them against the windshield, blinding J.B. He kept his speed up and steady, but knew that the exit to this channel was narrow—much more so than the exit that Correll and the drivers on the other side of the outcrop would have to contend with. He squinted and cursed to himself as he tried to see where the channel narrowed and the exit gap occurred.

  “Dark night, I can think of better ways to start an assault,” he gritted.

  “If you get us through this in one piece, I wouldn’t give a
shit if you sat back and let the rest of us get on with it,” Jenny said, “’cause you sure as hell would have done more than enough.”

  “I might hold you to that—if I get us through,” J.B. muttered, swinging the wheel as a looming dark shape, coming up suddenly out of the rain of dust, proclaimed that he had sighted one wall of the channel.

  He stomped on the brake to skid the vehicle to the left, catching sight of the other wall, and the slightly lighter gap between that proclaimed he had found the exit gap. Cursing softly, unwilling even to waste energy or concentration on talking aloud, J.B. headed straight for the light, and put his foot down, ignoring the dust that rattled against the windshield.

  “Sweet mother, you’ve done it!” Mildred exclaimed as the wag came out of the channel and into the lighter air of the desert. It was suddenly easier to see, and J.B. was able to get his bearings.

  The Armorer knew that there was little time to waste. The sound of wags roaring out of the enclosed channels and into the desert at either end of the outcrop would be enough to make the two trade convoys aware of an attack, and every second lost in turning and heading back into the arena to take up battle would be a second that the two sets of sec could prepare a defense. Every second counted, and no time could be wasted on turning the wags.

  So J.B. leaned heavily on the wheel and executed exactly the same kind of torturous metal-bending turn that Correll was executing at that same moment. His wag complained heavily, the wheels seeming slow in their ability to respond to his efforts at the wheel.

  “Turn us over now and I’ll never forgive you, John,” Mildred murmured to herself as the wag tilted alarmingly, throwing them across the interior.

  “Trust me,” the Armorer replied, almost to himself, as the wag righted itself and was facing the right direction—heading straight back into the arena. Through the lighter desert rain, he could see that the wags in front of him were still facing the wrong way to meet an attack, and the sec men still out of position, facing toward him but with the air of those frozen in sudden surprise.

  “I always do, John,” Mildred added, checking her Czech-manufactured ZKR target pistol. A handblaster wouldn’t be useful in the first attack, as they would be using the machine blasters mounted in the side of the wag to attack, but at some point, she had the feeling, it may just descend to hand-to-hand combat, in which case she wanted to be ready.

  At least, far more in readiness than either of the convoys they would be attacking.

  “SHIT! GRAB THE GIRLS and let’s get under cover,” Baron Tad Hutter yelled at his sec men as the storm started to blow up. He jumped down from the wag and ran toward the seemingly shackled girls until he was halted by a voice that sounded loud and strong above the howl of the wind.

  “Just hold your ass still right there unless you want to have it blown off!”

  Unwilling as he was to appear to heed such terms in his position as baron, Hutter’s instinct for self-preservation made him pull up sharply. He looked up to see Baron Al Jourgensen standing at the door of his own wag, a Sharps rifle in his hands, raised and trained on Hutter.

  “Don’t be a stupe,” Hutter snapped. “Look at the storm. We need to get this done with as soon as possible!”

  “Then tell your sec men to hurry up with the unloading,” Jourgensen snapped back.

  “Be reasonable.”

  “Be reasonable nothing—you fulfill your side of the bargain, and we’ll fulfill ours as soon as you’ve got everything unloaded.”

  “But—”

  The catch on the Sharps clicked, audible to Hutter even above the howl of the storm.

  “Don’t argue, Tad. You’re not in any position to start handing out orders, okay?”

  Hutter held his hands aloft. “Okay, Al, you’ve got all the cards right now, but we’ll see.” He turned slowly so that he faced his men. “You heard the man, start—”

  He was cut short in bemusement by the sight that met him. It would appear to him that his men had, in fact, given up the unloading altogether, as they seemed to be facing completely in the opposite direction to the central exchange point.

  It was then, as he looked at them, that he became aware of an undertone to the storm that had been bothering him for a few minutes without him being able to put a name to what it was. There was a growling sound that had nothing to do with the rush of wind and debris through the arena formed by the outcrop. It was the sound of wag engines being pushed to the limit. And as he looked past his immobile and stunned sec force, he could see three wags turning tightly and coming toward his men, headed directly for the entrance to the outcrop. Furious, he turned back to scream at Jourgensen.

  “You bastard! You’ve set us up!”

  But the words died on his lips. He could see beyond Baron Al that a similar situation was occurring at the rear of the Charity convoy. Jourgensen’s eyes met those of Hutter across the dust storm wastes, each ready to accuse the other but stopped dead by the bewilderment on the other’s face.

  “You?” Jourgensen yelled.

  Hutter shook his head. “Ambush,” he screamed. “Get back, for fuck’s sake, get into defensive positions,” he yelled at his men as he turned and headed back to the lead wag on the Summerfield convoy.

  Jourgensen, too, had decided that the best course of action was to ignore his opposing baron and concentrate on the menace that was now threatening. There would be time enough for Summerfield after this was sorted out. He slipped back into his wag, and picked up the handset, yelling, “Defensive now—watch the rear, turn the wags.”

  In the confusion, seed crops and supplies were left scattered across the center of the arena as the sec men headed back to the safety of their wags and the machine blasters and mounted flamethrowers, which would now prove to be of use in a way that Hutter couldn’t have predicted.

  Which actions also left the women, seemingly shackled together and guarded by two sec men, standing in the middle of the arena, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

  Which wasn’t quite the case.

  Ayesha and Claudette had both recognized the sound of the wags beneath the storm, and had been looking out for them. Now that the only sec man paying them any attention were those with empty blasters, it was the time to act.

  “Okay, let’s try and head back to the wag,” Ayesha screamed above the noise of the storm.

  “Good move,” Claudette yelled back, her plaits whipping around her head in the howling storm. “At least we can get a defensive position better there than out here in the open.”

  “What about the sec men?” one of the women asked. “Won’t they think it’s suspicious if we go back to the wag?”

  “Not if these stupes take us back,” Claudette replied, indicating the two sec men who had been acting as their unwilling cover.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” the sec man with the empty Uzi said with venom, throwing his useless blaster down to the desert floor and turning to run. “Baron!” he yelled, but was cut short by a burst of blasterfire from Claudette, who figured that all pretense was now blown and that they had been forced into the open. Before he had the chance to advance more than a few yards, the words were chilled on his lips as blood flooded into his lungs and bubbled up his throat from the immense internal injuries he received as a result of Claudette’s Uzi slugs hitting home.

  The sec driver turned to Ayesha, all his nerves now, ironically, quelled by a terror greater than any he had ever known before.

  “You bitch, this is all your doing, “ he yelled, flinging himself toward her.

  The girl stepped back, slipping off her shackles and bringing the knife up so that it was blade upward in her palm. As he lunged, she stepped calmly to one side and slashed at him, catching him across the side of his face. As he stumbled and fell, his hand came up to his face, leaving his ribs open at the side. She slashed under the rib cage, the razor-honed blade cutting through his clothes and scoring through flesh, fat and muscle. He howled in pain and doubled up on the floor of the arena,
no longer an immediate threat.

  “Drop the shackles and run like hell,” Claudette yelled, hanging back to marshal the women along to the wag while Ayesha dealt with the driver. When the girl joined her, Claudette looked around to see that Anita was the only one of the women who hadn’t run directly to the wag. In the confusion, no shots had been fired on them, and frankly it was unlikely that it had even been noticed that they were unshackled—until Anita had chosen to draw attention to this.

  The blowsy blonde was hammering on the window of Baron Al’s wag, screaming at him to let her in and save her, and she would do anything for him, and she wasn’t to blame, it was his good-for-nothing daughter who had sold them down the river to something called the Hellbenders.

  In a torrent of words that emerged as an almost incoherent jumble, the blonde had managed to spill the whole plot to Baron Al in a pathetic attempt to save her skin. The irony being that, in among the noise and confusion, and the fact that the window of his wag was firmly wound to shut out the dust, all the baron could see was a red-eyed, swollen-faced woman screaming at him. He looked at her in complete incomprehension.

  “Bitch,” Claudette muttered, “I’ve been wanting to do this for hours.” She raised her blaster.

  It was quick, but far from painless. She put two slugs into the woman’s knees, and Anita crashed to the ground with an ear-piercing yell of agony. The next two shots were into her shoulders, making it impossible for her to do anything but lie there, immobile, wailing in pain and confusion.

  Claudette and Ayesha made their way hurriedly back to the wag, Claudette pausing briefly to put a slug into Anita’s guts, blood spreading across the blonde’s dirty white blouse, her face contorted in pain.

  Her death was quickened by a final slug that was put through her open, mewling mouth, blowing her head apart. Claudette then stopped to spare the astounded baron a wink before making her way back to the safety of the wag.

  As she bounded in and slammed the doors, she said breathlessly, “I hope you can drive one of these things, girl, ’cause I sure as shit can’t.”