Kade

by Christopher Woods

  She drew the gladius from the sheath at her side. “Now, we get bloody.”

  Tim shot the last round from the Sig, and I muttered, “Going to have to get more mags from the Farmers.”

  He released the mag and started rapidly feeding cartridges into it.

  “Dammit, man,” Brandy said as she saw the speed at which he was filling it.

  “Lots of practice,” he said as the last one slid into place.

  The savages hadn’t reached the edge of the wall yet, so he leaned over and began firing down into them. Sixteen shots and twelve dead.

  A little sloppy, Childers said.

  “Give me a break,” Tim said. “It’s been twenty years.”

  “What?” Brandy asked, looking toward him.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  When the first head popped over the wall, Brandy took it off with the sword.

  Good execution, Childers said.

  Quite good, Gaunt agreed.

  Those two agreeing hardly ever happened, and it was worthy of notice.

  Use the strength, I said.

  He nodded and stepped close to the edge to punch the first savage who topped the wall in our area. The head jerked back at an odd angle.

  The savages kept coming, and they died as they topped the wall.

  Then the wave slackened, and we heard a thump as something hit the building between the front and right walls.

  “Shit! They crashed a truck into Building A!” someone yelled. “They’re inside!”

  Tim leapt from the wall into the courtyard just as the savages poured from the building.

  “More your area, Mathew,” Tim said, and he let me step forward inside my mind.

  I grabbed my blade and charged toward the screaming savages. I glanced left and saw a huge form slam into them as well. Two others dropped from the walls and took up positions on the right and left of Wilson Poe. Peggey’s rapier flashed and Joe Green’s twin swords blurred. The savages who reached them encountered a wall of steel. It channeled them in my direction.

  If you don’t mind, Mathew?

  I grinned.

  “What have we here?” Stephen Gaunt said as I let him out. “You’ve brought me playthings.”

  I glided forward under Stephen’s control and slipped under the swinging club of the first attacker. My blade flashed, and the man dropped the club and clutched his abdomen where his intestines were trying to drop from the gash I had left. He toppled forward, but I was already ten feet away, severing an Achilles tendon. Then I sliced a femoral artery.

  I slipped up behind a woman and pulled her chin up with my left hand as my right flashed across her throat.

  “This won’t hurt…much,” I whispered in her ear. Then I was gone again into the crowd.

  “Blow the charges!” I heard Brandy order.

  I saw someone in the very center of the courtyard throw a lever, but nothing happened.

  “Something’s wrong, ma’am!”

  “Son of a…”

  I saw two more forms drop from the right wall. One was the guy she had called Hillbilly and the other she had called Jonny.

  They slipped into the building.

  “What are they…?” I heard from the wall above me.

  CRUMPT…CRUMPT.

  Debris exploded from the opening the savages were pouring from and I heard screams. Then the whole building shuddered.

  “Shit!” Poe yelled. “Back up!”

  The Squires ran away from the building as it collapsed on top of more than a hundred savages and a couple of damned brave men. The debris cloud exploded outward, and I went into it after the surviving attackers. All the rest of them heard were screams and, maybe, laughter.

  Stephen enjoys his job a bit more than is comfortable for most folks. Most think Stephen is crazy, but there’s a need for his brand of crazy in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 7

  As the debris began to settle, we could see the corner of the Bastion’s Building A. It was a pile of rubble that would be almost impossible to navigate.

  Brandy moved up beside me. “Those magnificent, crazy bastards. They set the charges off manually.”

  I looked toward her and saw the pain on her face.

  “Looks like they’re coming back for the walls!”

  She grimaced, and I could feel the fury growing inside Tim Bolgeo.

  Can’t go out there while we’re needed on the wall, he said.

  “I know,” I muttered and jumped and landed on the wall again. “We leave the wall, and they get in, and everyone dies.”

  I pulled the Sig and refilled the mag as I watched them come down the street. As soon as I slammed the mag back into the pistol, I racked it and emptied it into the front of the approaching savages. Fourteen bodies were trampled by the others.

  I refilled the mag again and unloaded it with similar result, then the horde started back up the wall.

  I moved back a step and over to the center of the wall so I could go whichever direction I needed.

  “You want this?” I asked Tim.

  You’re doing better than I was, he answered. Been gone for too long.

  I nodded and shot forward as one of the savages topped the wall between two of the defenders. My foot slammed into his chest with a crunch, and the body flew backward over his allies’ heads. He landed twenty feet away from the wall on top of a screaming woman.

  One of the defenders staggered back as a blade sank into his neck in the spot where the armor met the helm. I jumped twenty feet and landed where he had been, then hit a woman, who had just topped the wall, with an open hand that sent her sailing backward.

  “Karen! Medic!” Brandy yelled. Several people scrambled from the center of the defended area. They ran up the stairs and pulled the wounded figure down toward the ground.

  She stepped into the spot beside me. “I have this position.”

  I nodded and stepped back so I could watch for any that got through. One got particularly close to Brandy, so I sank one of the twelve blades I wore into his right eye.

  Almost every one of the defenders had taken damage as the sun began to drop behind the buildings to our west, but the horde had not broken through. Then they fell back.

  Everyone atop the wall was breathing heavily. Swords hung from exhausted hands, and the bodies were piled halfway up the outside of the wall.

  I watched the savages retreat into the growing darkness with a grim smile as Tim stepped forward again.

  “They’ve sworn for years they would storm our walls,” Brandy said. “They would have, without you and the Society.”

  “They almost had us until those two blew that building.”

  “Hillbilly always swore he’d go out blowing himself up,” she said. “I didn’t think he would actually do it. His name was Scott Tackett, but we always called him Hillbilly because he came from West Virginia.”

  She shook her head. “And damn if Jonny Minion didn’t do the same. It took two to blow the charges that took the building down. Neither of them hesitated.”

  “Brave men,” Tim said.

  “Ma’am,” the medic yelled. “We lost Ken.”

  “Damn,” she muttered and turned to the tired men on the walls. “I have to check on things.”

  “Ma’am.” The closest of the men nodded.

  “They’re regrouping,” Tim said. “Would be a good time to see to the wounded. I’ll watch the wall.”

  “They won’t be back ‘til morning,” Brandy said. “Phobes don’t fight at night.”

  “Phobes?”

  “They hate books, they’re bibliophobes.”

  Tim grunted.

  “We’ll get some rest and see to the wounded,” she said. “Then we’ll get ready to do it again tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think there will be any fighting tomorrow,” Tim said as he looked out into the darkness. “They’ve made a fatal error.”

  “What?” She looked at him in confusion. “What error?”
r />   “I don’t have to be on this wall any longer,” he said.

  My head dropped a fraction, and her eyes widened when she saw the transformation. My features became those of someone else. It was the same face, but every feature had shifted. As my head raised, my mouth curled up in a wide smile.

  “Dad?”

  “Not at the moment, luv,” I said in Gaunt’s breathy voice. “Stephen Gaunt at your service. Your father has requested my assistance. He is good at what he does, as are Mathew and William. But I am the best at what I do. And, oh, the things I am going to do.”

  She swallowed.

  I removed the long coat and held it out to her. “Please be a dear and hold this for me. Mathew would be so upset if I wore it where I am going. Phobes, you say? I wonder if they are afraid of the dark. If they are not, already, they will be. Perhaps it is time for a lesson.”

  I leapt over the parapet rail and landed on the pile of bodies. Another jump took me out past the pile, where I faded into the night.

  I stopped, and I heard voices from the wall. I recognized Poe’s voice. “Did he just give you the coat?”

  “Yes. He said Mathew would be upset if he wore it where he was going.”

  “Looks like someone is going to have a bad night, ma’am. Did he say his name?”

  “Stephen Gaunt,” she answered.

  “Did someone say Stephen Gaunt?” Joe Green asked.

  “Yep,” Poe said.

  “If it was any other day, I would feel sorry for those poor bastards. But today? Serves them right.”

  “He’s only one man.”

  “Not really,” Poe said. “I agree with Joe. I’d pity the idiots out there if they hadn’t just spent the day trying their best to kill us. As it is, screw ‘em.”

  I grinned and slipped out into the night, toward the Phobes, as they set up their camps.

  There are more dangerous things than savage, book-burning cultists in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 8

  I sat, patiently, on the edge of the campsite, watching the sleeping Phobe. His eyes opened, and he sat up.

  “Hello, sleepy head,” Gaunt said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  The man looked to his right and left, with growing horror. There had been thirty-two people arrayed around the fire. Now there were thirty-one obvious corpses. Obvious because their heads had been severed and placed atop their prone bodies. All of them were facing him.

  He screamed and leapt to his feet to run, but I was next to him faster than any human should have been able to be.

  “No, no, we have things to discuss.”

  I grabbed the man by his neck and dragged him from the camp. He whimpered.

  I hit him with my stiffened fingers so quickly, he didn’t even see my hand move, and I placed him in the single open spot among fifteen living, but unmoving, people, sitting in neat rows of four.

  “Now, the lesson begins,” Stephen said.

  He turned and walked to a spot where all sixteen of them could see him. “Throughout history, people have destroyed cultures and left ruin. Some of them even burned all records of the defeated, but there is an inherent folly in doing so. You wished to destroy the books these folks have spent so many years collecting. They wish to preserve what knowledge they can, and you want to destroy it. The folly of such a goal is quite obvious if you only look at it. If you destroy all knowledge of the past, you are doomed to repeat it. Herein is the lesson.”

  He pointed to them. “I chose to keep one of you for every fifty I killed. If I had removed all of you, who would tell the following generations of your folly? As it is, this job falls to you. In about half an hour, the first of you I brought to this place will regain the use of his, pardon me, her limbs. When the rest of you join her, you will go back to your people and tell them of the horrible fate that awaits them if they ever return. Because, if they do, I will also return. And if I do, I will not be as forgiving as I have been this night.”

  I stood up and walked toward the Bastion, leaving sixteen horrified Phobes behind.

  * * *

  Karen Boyd looked up as I entered the warehouse-size Library in the pre-war underground bunker. She was a medic who had spent the last few days patching up the wounded. I could feel the wonder that filled Tim as I gazed at the many shelves of books. I couldn’t help feeling some of that wonder as well. The monumental task of gathering them was not lost on me. I’d dug and scavenged all through this city.

  “Mister Kade,” she said. “We can’t thank you enough for what you did. If there’s anything we can do, please let us know.”

  Oh, my, Stephen said in my head as he looked at a stack of books.

  “Might I trouble you for a few of those?” he asked. “I know someone who would dearly love to read them.”

  Softie, I said.

  “I’m sure we can spare a few.”

  I nodded and continued toward the person I had come to the Library to meet. I stepped back and let Tim take the lead.

  “You’re leaving again,” she said.

  “I would love nothing more than to stay here,” he said. He tapped the side of his head. “Mathew has started something we’ve all been needing. He’s walking a path of redemption. All of us did some pretty awful things to people who didn’t deserve them. He wonders what drives him so hard sometimes. He did things he’s not proud of, but he isn’t the only one in here. That drive comes from the sins of a thousand souls. Or however many of us there are in here. We have a responsibility to the Society and a bunch of Warlords who want to bring civilization back to this broken city. I know Tim Bolgeo died twenty years ago in Los Angeles, but I’m still here. I will always be here. If you don’t mind, I would like to stop by and visit from time to time.”

  There were tears in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around him. “You’re welcome here anytime, Dad.”

  She gave me an extra squeeze. “And all the rest of you.”

  She stepped back. “There’s a big dinner tonight, and I expect you to be there. You can’t go until everyone gets to thank you.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m going to go get things underway,” she said and walked out of the library.

  I picked up the first book Karen had laid on the table and sat down. “It is Tuesday.”

  If you don’t mind?

  “Of course,” I said. He was the last one I would expect to ask. Perhaps the time with us had changed even him.

  Stephen opened the book. “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish….”

  There was a sort of movement in the cage inside my mind as Luca happily listened to the words.

  * * *

  I watched as Brandy raised her glass in the air. The room fell into silence.

  “Before we take part in this wonderful dinner Connie and Charmalee have prepared for us, I would like to raise a glass. To fallen comrades,” she said.

  “Fallen comrades,” I answered along with the others, feeling the pride Tim felt in his daughter. Joe sat on my left and Poe on the right. Peggey was down about halfway on the other side of the huge table where she had been talking to several of the people she had met on her previous encounter with the Bastion.

  “To Ken Roy,” Brandy said.

  A tall man at the far end of the huge table stood. “I met Ken as we fought together to escape a Warlord named the General fourteen years ago. We found our way here after meeting several of the Explorers. He never regretted joining the Bastion, and he died protecting her.”

  “Ken Roy,” Brandy nodded.

  “To Jonny Minion,” she said, and another stood.

  “Jonny came to us several years ago. We never knew his last name; he just took the name of Minion. He was driving a big truck that surprised us all. There weren’t many vehicles still in use in the city. He had a trailer full of canned vegetables we all enjoyed, and he stayed after he met us. He was a kind soul and selfless all the way till the end. He loved this place, he loved the people, and he loved ar
guing with Hillbilly.”

  “Jonny Minion!”

  “To Hillbilly…Scott Tackett,” she said. “He showed up one day, shot and near death. After he recovered, he started working with Gabe in the forge. Used to be a diesel mechanic before the Fall, which explained why he and Jonny always argued. No truck driver is ever going to get along with a diesel mechanic.”

  There were chuckles around the room.

  “The two of them were arguing on top of the wall,” Joe added. “Counting how many of the Phobes they had killed.”

  I remembered an old movie with an elf and a dwarf and smiled.

  The names and stories continued, and I listened to each one as the defenders talked about their friends who had fallen.

  “Tomorrow, we will have to go out and clean up the bodies and burn them,” Brandy said. “But, tonight, we celebrate a victory that wouldn’t have happened without the aid of our new friends. So, eat, drink, and be merry! For tomorrow, we all may…work our asses off!”

  I watched the people of the Bastion as they cheered, and I realized, once again, there were things worth saving in this Fallen World.

  # # # # #

  Warlord

  Chapter 1

  I sat atop a rundown Scraper and looked down at the city that had been known as Philadelphia. No one called it that anymore. It had become part of the huge urban sprawl that had been Obsidian. Then it had become the urban wreckage I looked at today. The bombs had taken most of the east coast and left a ruin of the old Philadelphia where I made my home.

  Our home. I chuckled as Stephen Gaunt’s voice echoed inside my head.

  “True enough,” I muttered. “I guess there’s no reason to perch on top of a building like Batman.”

  I actually understood that reference, William Childers said.

  “Sadly, I can remember something like that, but I can’t remember the stuff I should know about my past.”

  I haven’t heard you talk about that issue much, Mathew. The voice in my head was female.