Earl and Verle were bored.
After a day like today, standing sentry duty flanking the door to the baronial palace was stone anticlimax.
“You see that white-haired mutie boy scream and squirm?” Verle asked his partner. Verle was the taller and blockier, and had a dark red beard wrapped around his lantern lower jaw. “Good times, bro. Good times.”
“Bullshit,” said Earl. He was narrow and dark-haired, with razored sideburns. He thought they went well with his sec-man black. “Wanted to see the little ones rips his guts out. That’s the real show there.”
“Naw. You just wanna see boobies. You get hard when the bitches are tied to the alter. Don’t lie to me. I see you.”
Earl moistened his lower lip with a quick stroke of his tongue. “So I like to see the bitches get theirs sometime. What’s wrong with that? You know what bitches’re like. Wag their little tails at you all inviting, but try to go for the goods and they push you all off like you’re covered in shit. And the baron backs them. Even Garrison backs them, when they’re holdin’ out on sec men! ‘Rule of law,’ he says. What a load of glowing night shit.”
“Well, we got a new man in charge now,” Verle said. “Things’ll change.”
“Yeah.” Earl licked his lips again. “I bet he tames that bitch Emerald triple-quick, now. She’s a handful, though.
Mebbe he’ll need help. Mebbe he’ll, like, send somebody down here to say—”
“Evening, boys.”
Earl felt his eyes stand out from his skull as if they were being pulled by magnets. It was a redhead, tall and unbelievably lush bodied, with a face from a wet dream and green eyes that glowed like jewels in the lights of the lanterns hung above the door guards. Her red hair stirred restlessly about her shoulders though there wasn’t even a hint of breeze. And the front of her white shirt was pushed way, way out by what hung beneath. As Earl’s pulse quickened so hard he felt it beating like fists in his temples.
“What’re you doin’ out?” Verle demanded hoarsely. “You’re one of them outland kidnappers, aren’t you? You should be locked down.”
“You sec boys should know a woman has her ways,” she said, her voice throaty and low. “She also has her needs. And two strong sec studs are just what I need to help me with mine.”
“Now, wait,” Verle said, “this ain’t right—”
“Verle, don’t be a droolie! Look at what’s offered!”
“I dunno. I think we need to call for backup.”
“How’re these for backup,” the redhead said, pulling open the front of her shirt, which apparently she’d been holding shut with her hands rather than having buttoned.
Two large pale-skinned breasts plopped out as if eager for the open air. The pink firm nipples looked at Earl like wide eyes.
They were the last sight his own eyes saw. All-consuming blackness smashed into the back of his skull. He felt his world break apart as redness filled his vision. Then white.
Then nothing.
T
HE TALL BEARDED
sec man’s eyes stood out from his face as his partner dropped forward onto his hatchet face. Mildred stood behind him with an ax, its blade dripping gore and brains and wisps of hair.
“And that’s my rule for bastards like you,” the physician declared in a fierce whisper. “Do harm
first.
”
The remaining sec man’s hand scrabbled for the blaster at his hip, but a hand clamped on his bearded lower jaw and yanked his head back hard. Then the edge of a panga was drawn across his exposed throat with such fury that it cut through arteries and windpipe and tendons.
As she stepped daintily aside to avoid the sudden arterial gush of blood, Krysty heard steel grate on neck bones. She buttoned her white shirt quickly.
“Good to see you still got it,” J.B. said. He had his hat tipped back on his head and was toting his big scattergun. He moved like an old man, but it thrilled Krysty’s heart to see him back in action again. And where he belonged: with them.
“Dang,” said one of the mixed crew of Dan E.’s scavvies and Tully’s men, coming out of the shadows into the plaza behind the companions.
Next stop would be the former baron’s bedroom.
The palace’s front door wasn’t locked. Mildred turned the handle and opened it quietly. Doc was first inside. He had his cane stuck through his belt, his LeMat handblaster in one big knobby-knuckled hand, his sword in the other. Mildred came next, holding the bloody ax across her chest. Hastily finishing up the front of her shirt, Krysty drew her S&W 640 and went in after. Ryan had knelt briefly to wipe his blade clean on the seat of the fallen door guard’s trousers. Now he brought up the rear, panga sheathed, SIG in hand.
Doc stopped to sweep the darkened entry room and
dining hall with his handblaster. J.B. checked the other direction. Mildred took up station at the bottom of the stairs. A curious rhythmic sound came down, similar to the noise the strange night creatures made in the trees of the shattered metropolis.
Without a word Ryan blew in like the wind and up the stairs, followed by Krysty.
All this happened with no talk and little noise. Bro Joe might not think it necessary to lock his front door, but he had a couple of guards on his bedchamber. These sat in chairs with their heads nodded to their chests, snoring. That accounted for the cicada sounds.
“Huh?” said the one on Krysty’s right. His eyes blinked once, then his head snapped up. He reached for his handblaster.
Krysty shot him in the gaping mouth, and his head snapped aback against the wall. Blood blossomed around it on the brick.
Ryan backhanded the other out of his chair. As the guard scrambled to clear his sleep-addled wits and rise, Krysty heard Mildred’s Czech-made ZKR 551 handblaster bark twice from the stairs, filling the upper landing with yellow pulses of light. The man rolled to the wall, streaming blood.
Ryan yanked open the door. A blast of humid, rank-smelling air hit Krysty in the face. It was weighed down and shot through with the smells of incense, some cloying sweet, some astringent. But they couldn’t mask what they were clearly intended to: the smell of unwashed bodies, prolonged sickness and nasty death.
Brother Joseph sat bolt upright in the middle of the canopied bed. His mouth gaped and his eyes blinked in the light of hundreds of candles placed all over the room. He couldn’t seem to assimilate what he was seeing.
Krysty was surprised to see he was alone. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed.
One way or another the task of liberating Princess Emerald would fall to others. Well, those others were ready, willing and able. She’d have just been in the companions’ way. Their business lay elsewhere.
Following close behind Ryan, Krysty swung right and dropped to a knee to cover that way. J.B. was next in. He stepped left to clear the door and covered his side of the room with his shotgun.
Ryan marched to the bed, reached through the half-open silk curtain, grabbed Brother Joseph by the front of the pair of baronial purple silk pajamas he was wearing and, turning hard, hurled him onto an ornate rug.
The guru landed hard and slid on his side on the rug almost to the feet of Mildred, who stood in the doorway while Doc guarded the landing.
Brother Joseph pushed himself up on one arm. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, spittle flying from his mouth.
“Is that the best you’ve got to say?” Mildred demanded. She brandished her ax with her left hand. “If you go on and say we’ll never get away with this, I’ll chop parts off your piece of shit phony Jeffrey Dahmer ass.”
One thing Krysty had to say for the fraudulent spiritual leader: he recovered his composure quickly. He rolled to a sitting position and blinked around at them, as mild as a lamb.
“But what will you say to my parishioners?” he asked. “What of the compact?”
“I got your compact right here,” Ryan said, emerging from behind the diaphanous curtain. He had clambered across the big bed on all fours and now was coming back. “Literally.”
He thrust out a hand. It held a strange boxy assemblage of what looked like green plastic with random bits stuck to it. In the light of the many candles it took Krysty several beats of her hard-driving heart to recognize the object.
“That’s the head of Brother Joseph’s staff!” Mildred exclaimed.
Doc snapped his long spidery fingers. “Of course! That is the very device that our false prophet both summons and dispels the screamwings. Most ingenious, I must say.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, climbing off the bed. “Remember how Jak kept hearing weird sounds none of the rest of us could? A kind of deep hum, and a real high buzz, like mosquitoes?”
“Yes!” Mildred said. “He heard the hum stop and the high-pitched whine begin right before the screamwings appeared to take their sacrifices! Subsonics must repel them, and supersonic frequencies attract them.”
“Absurd!” Bro Joe cried. “I have no idea what you’re talking abou—Ow!”
He clutched the side of his head where Mildred had clipped him with a one-handed blow of the back of her ax.
“Lie better,” she commanded sternly. “Better yet, keep it shut.”
He glared at her with undisguised hatred.
“Where’s our gear?” Krysty asked.
“Stored in a back room,” Brother Joseph said.
“I’ll get it,” J.B. said.
“No, you won’t,” Ryan said. “You’ll sit on the bed and help me guard our friend here, while Doc scares up something to tie and tether him with. Krysty, why don’t you and Mildred go check out and see if our stuff’s there like the man says, which for his sake it best be.”
“Sure, Ryan,” Krysty said.
“And, Mildred, you can leave the ax.”
She clutched it protectively. “No way. May need it to open the door.”
“Just as long as you remember that’s what it’s for,” Ryan said.
“Q
UIET NIGHT,”
J.B. remarked as they emerged into the street. Looking from the windows of the baron’s room they had seen no activity in the plaza or any sign of movement. But Ryan and Krysty had still gone out first to make sure things were safe before giving their friends the all-clear.
“No crickets, no birds,” the Armorer said. He was moving like an old man, Ryan saw, but he kept his usual nonchalant grin and banty-cock attitude.
He’ll be all right,
he thought.
He’s a tough little bastard.
Two pops sounded somewhere off to the south. “Blasters,” J.B. said. “Reckon that’s why the bugs and birds aren’t talkin’.”
“Power struggle playing out,” Ryan said.
“Doesn’t seem to involve Brother Joseph,” Krysty said.
The self-proclaimed holy man emerged from the palace now. He wore a long tie-dyed T-shirt and loose linen trousers over sandals. He held his head high despite the fact his arms were tied before him and his legs hobbled by long, strong, brightly colored silk scarves from a chest of drawers in the baron’s rooms. Mildred held a rope tied to his bound hands in one hand and her blocky revolver in the other. She had been persuaded to leave the ax behind.
“Reckon everybody counts him out of the equation now,” Ryan said.
“Our young friend Emerald is probably consolidating her power base at this moment, if I might hazard a
guess,” Doc said. Like the rest he carried his full pack on his back.
“She and her friends’ll have their hands full with Garrison’s bunch,” Ryan said. “Oh, well. As long as none of it gets on us. Step it up, holy man.”
“You discount my loyal acolytes?” Brother Joseph asked haughtily. “You err grievously there.”
“No, we don’t count them out,” Ryan said. “Matter of fact we’re about to address that little issue right now. Let’s pay a visit to your temple.”
Brother Joseph frowned at him. Ryan smiled blandly back.
“Go,” Mildred said.
The guru went, like a lion crossing its territory he strode across the plaza, right past the altar. It had been covered again after the evening’s entertainment. Ryan frowned at sight of it.
“Faster,” he said.
They reached the door to the temple. “I’d be happy to admit you, if you’d but untie me,” Brother Joseph said.
“Nice try,” Krysty replied. She produced a key ring she had taken from the table beside the late baron’s bed. The third key turned the lock.
She looked back at Ryan with her hand on the knob. He nodded at Brother Joseph.
“Him first.”
A frown flitted across the spiritual leader’s face. “Very well,” he said. “If you can bring yourself to walk into a house of God with your souls in such disarray, I shall happily lead you. Perhaps you will find enlightenment.”
“Can it,” Mildred said in a dangerous tone. Ryan relieved her of the other end of Brother Joseph’s leash.
Krysty pushed the door open and stood clear. Ryan
prodded the guru forward with the muzzle of his SIG-Sauer P-226. He followed the holy man inside.
It was dark but for the moonlight spilling in from outside and a furtive yellow gleam beneath a door down a hall that led into the building to the right.
Ahead of them another door was a black oblong of darkness. From it suddenly emerged a small, hunched-over shape.
“Die, unbelievers!” Booker screeched. The muzzle-flash of the Uzi he was carrying filled the room with jittering light and shattering noise.
Brother Joseph’s head snapped back. Grunting, he sagged against the door frame, then fell left into the room out of the doorway.
Ryan hit the floor. Salvaged vinyl tiles had been laid long ago and long ago begun to dry, shrink and crack. They still provided a little buffer between him and the hard concrete floor.
Screaming like a man afire, Booker held the weapon in front of him with both hands and ripped another long, fiery burst from left to right.
Despite the Uzi’s weight, the twisted little man couldn’t keep the stubby weapon from climbing with its own recoil. Plywood sheets nailed over the big windows boomed as 9 mm slugs punched through them. Concrete dust began to shower from cinder blocks in the wall above as the bullet-stream tore into them.
Ryan stuck his handblaster out one-handed. His eyes were dazzled by the machine pistol’s muzzle flare, as big as a land wag in the darkened room. He pointed the SIG in its general direction and started cranking shots.
Booker screamed. He held down the trigger, the Uzi’s bullets sawing into the ceiling.
With a noise shatteringly loud even next to the Uzi’s blare, a huge chunk of the wooden sheet covering the right-hand window blew in. The weapon’s flame died.
Booker was down on one knee. He screamed contin
uously, as if he didn’t have to draw breath. Ryan couldn’t tell if he’d hit the man. He was blinking at big purple blobs of afterimage, although faint light filtering through the hole in the plywood let him see Booker as a darker shadow against shadows. He tried to line his sights up on the little man.
At last pausing to inhale, Booker turned his weapon to the gap in the window-covering and yanked the trigger.
The Uzi’s stub muzzle dipped, then rose as Booker’s finger pressure slacked. Then it did a little up-and-down dance as the toady yanked at it furiously, as if somehow that would make it go bang.
But nothing would. Ryan could see the charging handle locked dead back. Booker had blazed away a full mag.
Fire roared through the hole. By its garish yellow light Ryan saw the whole right side of Booker’s head, shades and all, turn to cloud as the buckshot charge hit.
The little man continued to crouch. He seemed to be staring through the remaining lens of his dark glasses. His finger kept tugging on the Uzi’s trigger, mechanically and futilely.
Another shotgun blast blew what was left of his head to pieces. Booker fell, flopping like a decapitated chicken. The final spasms of his heart sprayed the bases of the walls with blood ink-black in the gloom.
“Clear!” Ryan called. Krysty stepped in the door over Brother Joseph’s legs. She shifted right. Mildred came in next and went left. Each had her .38 blaster gripped in both hands, ready to engage.
“Oh, my,” Doc said, stepping over Brother Joseph like a fastidious stork. “Our sky pilot appears to be hoist with his own minion’s petard, so to speak.”
J.B. strolled in, feeding fresh shells into his scattergun’s tube magazine.
“Check the preacher, Mildred,” Ryan said, picking himself up. He was feeling the beatings he’d gotten, both the previous night and earlier that evening.
Mildred balked. “I want him patched,” Ryan said, “unless he’s too nuked to keep up. He’s gonna help us get Jak back.”
“But—”
“Look, just fix him. If he’s fixable. We need him.”
“Give me a light at least.”
J.B. flicked a match alive with a thumbnail. Mildred bent over Brother Joseph to examine him. Krysty brought a candleholder from a study table. The Armorer lit the candles, then straightened to help Ryan and Doc stand guard.
“He’s alive,” Mildred said. “Worse luck.” She helped him to a sitting position and propped him against the wall. A thin blood trail ran down the right side of his face.
“What’s behind the door, there, Bro Joe?” Ryan asked, nodding down the darkened hallway.
Joseph gave him a thin, taut smile. “Look for yourself.”
“Fine. J.B.?”
“Right with you, Ryan.”
With the Armorer and his scattergun backing him he went to the door where the light showed along the bottom. They took up position either side of the door. Ryan, on the right, knocked with the back of his knuckles.
Nothing. He nodded to J.B., who stood on the side of the frame by the knob. Gently and with a deft touch the Armorer tested the knob. He nodded to Ryan to be ready: unlocked.
J.B. turned the knob and gave the door a push to start it. Ryan came around with a kick that snapped it wide. He followed with his SIG at the two-handed ready.
Ceiling-high racks holding consoles and instruments lined three walls of the room, their dark faces alive with amber and green lights. An electric trouble lamp clamped to one of the racks accounted for the shine beneath the door. A folding table had been turned on its side in the middle of the room, with its legs pointed away from the door. Two upset chairs, a game board, cards and plastic pieces lay strewn on thin sour-smelling carpet around it. Two men crouched behind it, peering at the door with big eyes. When they saw Ryan, they ducked back down.
“What do you want?” one demanded in a shrill voice. “Who’re you? Go away!”
“Come out,” Ryan said. “Or do you really think that stupe table’s going to stop bullets?”
Reluctantly the two rose. One was tall and skinny and round-headed, with dark lank bangs falling across his forehead. As he stood up, he pushed a pair of eyeglasses up his forehead. Their bridge had been repaired with tape. His partner was fat, with a buzz haircut and heavy-rimmed glasses. Both looked to be no more than kids.
“Where’s the big screamwing repeller?” Ryan said.
The skinny kid folded his arms across his tie-dyed acolyte shirt. “Uh-uh,” he said. “You won’t get anything from me.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. He shot him through the tape-wrapped bridge of his glasses. The kid fell straight down as if his bones had melted.
The other jumped straight up. “You killed Mark!” he cried in a shrill voice.
“You in a mood to answer questions?”
“Oh, yes. Please don’t hurt me. I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
“Sit down,” Ryan directed. “Your quivering makes me nervous.”
The boy sat down so suddenly his folding chair threatened to give way beneath him. “Sorry, sir. Please, what did you want to know again? I’m sorry, seeing Mark get shot like that just totally drove it out of my head, please, I’ll answer—”
“Where’s the big screamwing-repelling thingie? Some kind of generator keeps those nuke-suckers away from the ville. I want to know where it is.”
“The big what? No! Wait! Don’t shoot! I—There isn’t one. I mean, there are several of them! Six. Six of them. They’re sited around the ville. They run off solar-powered batteries we bought off the scavvies, with alcohol-fueled generators for when the charge gets low. Just like this place. It—they don’t draw much power. They—”
“Enough. Sit tight. You shouldn’t open the door for the next half hour. Bad things could happen.”
The fat kid stared at him with his moist-lipped mouth slackened and his eyes wide. “You’re gonna leave me in here with
him?
” he asked plaintively, indicating the late Mark.
“You rather join him?”
“No! No, please.”
“Then sit tight.”
J.B. backed out of the room first, covering with his shotgun. Then Ryan left, closing the door behind him.
“Interesting,” J.B. said. “Love to get my hands on one of those repellers. Pull it apart, see what makes it go.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Well, however things shake out tonight, J.B., I don’t give good odds we’re going to be welcome back here for a protracted stay anytime soon.”
“Sad but true, Ryan. Sad but true.”
They returned to the worship area at the front of the church. Mildred was just straightening. She looked disgusted.
“What’s the damage?” Ryan asked.
“Nothing much. The bullet just clipped the side of his head. Gouged him a little eensy bit. I cleaned it up and put on a pressure bandage.”
Indeed she had, Ryan noted. In fact she’d wrapped what looked like a whole five yards of the lightweight cotton cloth they used for bandages hereabouts around his head. Bro Joe looked as if his religion had suddenly decided what it really needed was turbans.
“It bled most copiously,” said the preacher, stung by the obvious contempt in her voice. “Plus it was quite extraordinarily painful.”
The companions laughed.
“Pray you never learn the true meaning of pain,” Doc told him.
“If you don’t want to get a quick tutorial,” Ryan said, “tell us where we can find the fuel for your genny, double-quick.”
“It’s out in back,” the preacher said in disgust. “In a small shed next to the one that houses the generator. You’ll find the door unlocked. Soulard is an honest ville.”
“Or a triple-stupe one,” J.B. said. “You leave fuel unlocked?”
“Thieves automatically win that month’s lottery,” Brother Joseph said.
“Well, I guess there’s one point in favor of the system,” J.B. said.
“Don’t get carried away, J.B.,” Ryan said. “It’s the only one. Now, on your feet, holy man. We got a ways to go before you get to rest.”
“Where we headed?” Krysty asked.
“First off, to tell Strode where to find the generators and electronics. Bet she can come up with some use for
them. Mebbe for that techie acolyte you got back there, too. He’ll probably be right eager to help.”
“Acolyte? There are supposed to be two on duty—oh.” He realized the implication of the gunshot he’d heard after the door into the control room was kicked open. “You’re quite inhuman, you know.”
“Aren’t you a fine one to talk,” Mildred said, “feeding people to your pterodactyls.”
“What do you intend after you reveal my secrets to the people of the ville?” Brother Joseph asked. “Are you going to leave me to their putative vengeance?”
“Hard to say, since I don’t know what ‘putative’ means. But no. Not to any kind of their vengeance,
putas
or not. You’re coming with us.”
“Where?”
“To rescue Jak.”
“You fools! He’s dead. The screamwings ate him. You saw how rapacious they are!”
Stubbornly Ryan shook his head. “I haven’t seen his body nor any identifiable loose parts. Until I do, he may still be alive, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’re mad!”
Krysty came to stand beside her man. “Yes, he is,” she said. “With a most magnificent madness. But don’t delude yourself. Ryan Cawdor usually gets what he wants, and always what he sets his mind to!”
B
LASTER SHOTS PEPPERED
the night in several directions as they emerged from the healer’s clinic. Strode had seemed nonplussed by the turn of events. Her eyes had gotten wide when she saw the yards of bandage wound around Brother Joseph’s head, but she hadn’t made any comment.
“What now?” Mildred asked. She wrinkled her nose
at the smell of burned lubricants and propellant that had tainted the warm night air.
They had unloaded the contents of their packs in Strode’s back room, trusting her bemused promise to keep it safe against their return. If they didn’t come back in three days, Ryan told her, it was all hers. In turn they had stuffed their packs with jars and pots of fuel meant to power Bro Joe’s secret scavenged generators, and fish oil used in lamps, all sealed with wax.
“We leave,” Ryan said, “unless anybody just can’t bear to part with this place. Excluding Brother Joseph, of course.”
“How do you propose that we do that, friend Ryan?” Doc asked. “Simply stroll up to the gate and ask nicely to be allowed egress?”
Ryan grinned. “Exactly. If ‘egress’ means what I think it does.”
“Won’t the sec have a word or two to say about that?” J.B. asked.
“Not if they care about Bro Joe.”
“How d’you mean?”
“I mean, specifically, not if they care whether you blow his head off with the big old scattergun you’re going to be poking in his earhole.”
J.B. grinned. “Must have lost a step, staying in bed a whole week. Or I’d have been there ahead of you!”
He turned to the preacher. “On your way there, Brother.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be poking the shotgun in my earhole?”
“Plenty of time for that when we get there,” J.B. said. “Never rush a craftsman at his work.”
R
YAN LED THE WAY
down the street with SIG in hand. J.B. followed with his shotgun’s muzzle a handspan from Brother Joseph’s back. Then came Doc and Mildred.
Krysty bought up the rear. Both women held their double-action .38 handblasters ready for action.
But nobody was quite prepared when Garrison himself strolled into the light of the lanterns burning on either side of the gate from the guardhouse.
“Going somewhere, folks?” he asked casually.
J.B. grabbed a handful of Bro Joe’s T-shirt, which fortunately stretched enough to actually allow him to stick the shotgun’s muzzle into the guru’s ear.
“Don’t try to stop us, Garrison,” Ryan said. “We got your holy Joe.”
“Kill them!” Brother Joseph shouted. “Kill them! I know you’ve got enough men at the gate to gun them all down before they can hurt me.”
“Nothing could be further from my intention than stopping you, Ryan,” Garrison said in a conversational tone. “And he isn’t my holy Joe.”
“But I’m the spiritual leader of this commune!” Brother Joseph said. “I’m to marry the baron! And what about the compact? What will you do without me to intercede on your behalf with King Screamwing? How will the people react when they find you’ve exposed them to risk of hideous death every time they venture outside?”
Garrison shrugged. “Don’t think they’ll react much when I tell them what a crock of shit the whole ‘sacred compact’ thing was,” he said. “How it was all you keeping the hoodoos away with that funny little dingus on your staff, and calling them the same way. Which I don’t notice you carrying, by the way.”
“Blasphemy!” Brother Joseph screeched. “How dare you?”
“Oh, cool your pipes. I figured it out years ago, but the baron went along with your game. He seemed to think it
promoted social order, so I didn’t see fit to piss on your prayer meetings. Not on me to make policy.”