Axler, James - Deathlands 60 - Destiny's Truth Read online

  J.B. SAW Jak break cover and lead his people forward. The albino was setting a rapid pace, and the Armorer signaled for his group to move.

  But first he took a handful of stones and threw them in a sweeping arc over the land ahead. Some pattered onto the earth with only a small puff of dust to mark their landing. But two of them drew results. The first mines to be encountered went off, the sudden noise almost deafening in the dawn, clouds of dirt and stones being thrown up. Other stones flew from the hands of warriors as J.B. began to move forward, marking his own personal path by sweeping the area immediately in front of him with a long branch taken from the trees surrounding.

  The first wire trap was found, tripped by the branch and springing up viciously in a loop of fine steel that would take off a foot at the ankle. One thing was for sure: the Illuminated Ones had guarded their redoubt well, for the mines and traps were well hidden. The Armorer just hoped that those following him would be as careful in plotting their path.

  The screams from behind him belied that belief..

  Like the Armorer, the Gate warriors were too wise in the ways of warfare to take anything for granted, and were making their own paths forward, following the direction dictated by their sweeping sticks assiduously. But the Crossroads warriors, being unused to the ways of combat, were a little more slack. They would throw the stones to try to find mines, and would attempt to sweep the oncoming path, but they had trouble sticking to that which they had tested, and it wasn't long before a stray foot encountered the edge of a snare trap.

  The man who had previously been attached to the foot felt a pull that, at first, didn't hurt. This was delayed by the initial shock, and it was only when he saw the snare snap back, throwing a severed foot, still booted, across the earth, that he realized it was his own foot that he was watching. Suddenly ashen gray with shock and pain, he let out a strangled scream as he fell to the ground, the area about his legs staining dark with the ebb and flow of his blood.

  At least he was still alive. A fellow Crossroads dweller taking part in the charge wasn't as lucky. Like his fellow, his straying foot had caught in a snare, cutting him off at the ankle. But as he fell, he landed on a part of the ground that hadn't been swept, and his head found another, barely hidden, snare that wrapped itself around his throat, biting through his flesh with ease. His screams were strangled and choked in his throat as he felt the world darkening around him. Veins and arteries were cut and severed, and the wire was sharp enough to slice easily through the vertebrae, leaving the head cleanly cut from the rest of his body. The tension of the wire, as it met with a sudden lack of resistance, catapulted the head across the ground, throwing it in front of the leading pack. It smacked to earth with a dull thump that was inaudible over the violent explosion it triggered as it hit a mine.

  J.B. looked up momentarily to see how far ahead Jak's group was. It was a given that they would be first to the redoubt, as they weren't slowed by the necessity to plot a safe path. However, the Armorer was concerned that the other war parties should not fall too far behind. So far, his group was keeping pace fairly well.

  He spared a glance to see how Doc's group was faring.

  "BY THE THREE KENNEDYS!" Doc exclaimed. "If this does not bring any opposition out of hiding, then nothing will!"

  "Let's hope that Ryan and Gloria have got them too occupied, then," Cat returned.

  The small, dark haired woman had been sticking close to Doc since the charge had begun. She had noticed that Doc wasn't faring as well as some of his compatriots, and she knew that—like Jak and Mildred—he had contracted a form of the pox that they were seeking in the redoubt. She liked the old man, and although Dette had been publicly dismissive of her intelligence—as well as that of her friend Nita— she was smart enough to know that Doc was more vulnerable than the others, and despite his fighting spirit may need some help along the way. So she had decided that she would be that help, and was in the vanguard of the charge with Doc, helping him forward.

  As on the far side of the beaten track, Doc's war party had been sweeping the ground and using the stone throwing method to try to clear their own personal paths. Doc had already been outpaced by a few of the Gate warriors, but was still near the front because of the help from Cat. She could see that Doc had difficulty moving and breathing as the disease took a firmer hold on him, and so she swept ahead for him, as well as for herself.

  "Come, my dear, we must make more speed," Doc implored, looking across to where J.B.'s party was advancing. "We cannot be left behind. Our strength is in depth, and we cannot let our friends down under any circumstances."

  Yet, even as he spoke Doc was gasping for breath.

  Cat took his arm. "Don't worry, Doc. You stick with me and we'll get there," she said.

  JAK SLOWED as his war party reached the door of the redoubt. An incredible sight greeted them. The wag had just intercepted the closing door, and as the warriors arrived at the entrance to the tunnel, they were stunned to see the wag being crushed under the descending door and Ryan leaping to safety.

  Taking the situation in at a glance, Jak made a snap judgment.

  "We go in now. Keep close to wall, keep in cover. Push up, support Ryan and Gloria soon as possible," he said rapidly, moving to one side of the tunnel himself and pushing a Gate warrior toward the other, in this manner setting up two chains of warriors to feed into the redoubt.

  The two strands advanced rapidly toward the point where the vanguard force had established a position, firing at the Illuminated Ones through the gap in the jammed sec door. The advancing warriors didn't fire. Until they were in position, there was an outside chance that they may hit their own people, and the gap through which it was possible to fire at the Illuminated Ones was restricted by the bulk of the wag, jammed in the center of the corridor.

  "Hey, Ryan—we here," Jak yelled as the first of the war parties moved up to join the advanced party.

  "What about the others?" the one-eyed man asked, noting that there were comparatively few warriors behind the albino.

  "On way," Jak replied.

  OUTSIDE THE REDOUBT, both J.B. and Doc had brought their war parties through the hidden obstacles with a minimum of casualties. There were numerous abrasions and small cuts from flying stones, but only five people had fallen prey to the snares, and none had been in the direct blast of the mines. It had been a much more successful assault than either could have hoped for thus far, and it was with some degree of optimism that they headed their groups as they converged on the redoubt entrance, coming off the booby trapped sides and onto the safety of the track.

  Ahead, they could see that the way was clear until the point where the wag sat jammed beneath the sec door. They could also see the two groups of warriors taking cover in the area directly to the rear of the wag. There were only a few desultory exchanges of fire, and both J.B. and Doc could figure that the attack was now stalled, waiting for the reinforcements to arrive.

  The Armorer turned to the united forces.

  "Go in quick, take cover to the sides—be a shame to be caught by a stray blast—and await further orders." He waved them in, and the attackers began to feed into the redoubt, flowing past him. He turned to Doc.

  "I figure we should see what Ryan and Gloria have to say about this. Looks good for a full assault, but—"

  "But it has been a tad too simple thus far, would you not say? Only a few traps to traverse? I would have expected more, which suggests that they have something in reserve."

  J.B. nodded. "Yeah, I'd reckon on that, too." He stopped and peered intently at Doc, who was breathing with some difficulty and being partly supported by Cat. "Doc, how you feeling? I mean, honestly."

  "In truth, I feel as though I have a horde of stickies with those loathsome suckered fingers crammed into my lungs, trying to prevent me from breathing. I fear that the pox is finally taking a hold on me. My skin feels chafed and sore, and look—" Doc held open his shirt to reveal a network of pustules and scabs that were starting t
o spread across his chest and stomach. "I may not have long, John Barrymore, and while I will fight to the last, I fear that I may not be as reliable as I would wish."

  J.B. nodded once. There was no way he wanted Doc to get this far and then fall at the last fence.

  Before the Armorer had a chance to say anything, Cat broke in. "Don't worry about old big mouth, here," she said, punching him playfully on the arm. "I'll keep him on his feet and fighting until we get through."

  She looked at Doc, saying, "You buy the farm, I have to buy it first, yeah?"

  Doc inclined his head graciously. "I appreciate your concern, madam."

  "Fine, but let's cut the words," J.B. said urgently. "Doc, you and Cat get to the front on one side, and I'll go for the other. We need to get the game plan sorted quickly."

  "Agreed," Doc affirmed. "Let's go…"

  "JOHN, GLAD YOU COULD make it and join the fun," Mildred said as the Armorer reached the front of the vanguard party.

  "Sorry, I was a little detained," he commented wryly. "What's going on?"

  "Not as much as we'd like, I guess," Mildred began before outlining briefly the situation as it stood.

  When she had finished, J.B. scratched his head, pushing back his fedora, before taking off his spectacles and polishing them, a habit that indicated he was now deep in thought.

  "So the number one priority is to push them back and move down into the redoubt, which we can only do if we drive them back far enough to get access to the other side of the sec door and bring it up fully. Otherwise we're sitting targets trying to squeeze through that space."

  "That's about it," Mildred agreed.

  J.B. put on his spectacles and pushed them up the bridge of his nose, his eyes shining as he viewed the way ahead.

  "Leave it to me," he said simply before darting across the corridor, using the wag as cover and keeping low.

  "Ryan, I think I've figured a way to drive them back and keep the next sec door up while we secure this one and get it up for a full assault," he said in a rash.

  "Tell me," Ryan replied simply. J.B. outlined his plan, and Gloria looked at him in astonishment.

  "You think that'll work?" she asked.

  The Armorer shrugged. "If not, we're fucked anyway. We have to get past them and get that door opened. I figure this is worth the risk. It can be done if you give me enough cover."

  Ryan nodded. "Try it. You're the only one I'd trust with such a crazy idea."

  J.B. swung his canvas bag off his shoulder and began to mold a small lump of plas-ex, which he extracted from the interior. "I hope to hell that I've judged this right," he muttered as he molded and added a timer fuse to the small bomb. "If not, I'll bring down the whole tunnel."

  "We'll just have to trust to luck. It's got us this far," Ryan said as the Armorer completed his bomb and set the fuse.

  "Ready," he stated. "Keep me covered. I'll keep low, so just fire over me and try to stop those coldheart bastards firing back!"

  Ryan nodded. "Good luck."

  J.B. gave him a wry grin, then dropped to the floor, the M-4000 in one hand, the bomb in the other.

  Laser fire heated the air above his head as he crawled past the door stanchion and into the no-man's land beyond the trapped door. Following their cue, the war party on the other side of the wag began a heavy barrage of fire, keeping the Illuminated Ones pinned in their cover.

  Climbing to his knees, J.B. raised the M-4000. He knew instinctively that some of the Illuminated Ones would break cover to fire on him. As they leveled their laser blasters, he fired at them, then dropped and began to crawl again. He was already flat by the time that the barbed metal flechettes from the shotgun charge had ripped into the Illuminated soldiers, chilling some instantly as vital organs were ripped to shreds, wounding others as they were hit in the arms and face.

  This and the laser fire from the war parties caused the Illuminated Ones to drop back.

  Acting as fast as his prone position would allow, J.B. rolled against the wall so that he was covered by the buttresses, and righted himself so that he could inch along the wall until he was up against the door stanchion. Taking a deep breath, and noting that there were only seconds left on the timer fuse, he pushed the plas-ex against the stanchion, pushing the soft, puttylike explosive into the groove that ran down the length of the stanchion to allow the door to fall.

  He was never closer to buying the farm. Any Illuminated soldier with fast enough reflexes or who was close enough could easily have taken off his arm with a laser blast.

  But they were in ignorance of J.B.'s plans, and so were in no position to react. The Armorer was able to place the plas-ex, turn and fling himself to the ground, huddling close to the wall as the plas-ex blew, hoping that no flying rubble would injure him.

  "Damn."

  Mildred was the first to react after the explosion. The corridor was filled with a choking dust as the stanchion blew out, buckling the metal runners so that the sec door couldn't be lowered, and causing the Illuminated soldiers to pull back in a panicked state. Meanwhile, Mildred keyed in the sec code scratched on the key plate. When the door had risen, she blasted the circuitry with the laser rifle to prevent it being closed again by remote means. Thanking the consistency of human nature, she turned and made her way to J.B., who was huddled against the wall, coated in a layer of dust and concrete chip.

  "John! Are you all right?" she yelled as she reached him.

  Taking his arms from over his head, where he had flung them to provide whatever protection he could from the blast, he grinned at her.

  "You know, for a moment there I thought I might have got the amount wrong and arranged my own burial," he said matter-of-factly.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As the Armorer dusted himself off, Ryan and Gloria had already sped past him to the damaged sec door, taking cover and scanning the corridor that lay beyond. It was empty up to the point where the dog legged descent into the bowels of the earth began. There would be elevators and an emergency staircase that they would have to check out, but it would seem that their best and safest option—both from the point of view of sticking together and also affording themselves the best protection—would be to keep taking the main tunnel downward.

  "For fuck's sake, where the hell have they all gone?" Gloria asked.

  Ryan surveyed the empty corridor. Unless there was a sec squad lurking around the bend in a primitive attempt at ambush, then they were on their own. Certainly, there seemed to have been no attempt at establishing a defensive block on the corridor. It was as though the Armorer's actions had driven the Illuminated Ones back to a core defensive position.

  Perhaps it had. That would certainly make progress easy. Ryan outlined this possibility to Gloria, ending, "Though why they'd want to pull back so soon is something that worries me."

  "Why? They know they're not that shit hot as fighters, so mebbe they really see that as their best option."

  Ryan shook his head. "No, it still doesn't add up. There's too much tech along the way—assuming they've pulled right back to the kind of chambers we saw before…the ones you were stranded in when you landed. They must know we're after the lab, and where they keep the disease."

  Gloria shook her head. "Why? Why would they assume that? They might think we're just carrying on the fight from where we left it. Why would they assume that we're going to add two and two and make four? Bet you thought I couldn't do that, eh?" she added with a sly grin. And when Ryan didn't answer, she continued. "You see? If you don't think that far about me, then why should they think that far about us? They think we're triple stupe. They think everyone is compared to them. So why would they think we're after anything other than a firefight and a chance of revenge?"

  Ryan grimaced. "You could be right. Can we afford to think that, though?"

  Gloria shrugged. "We can afford nothing, honey. We've just got to go for it and hammer these motherfuckers as much as possible. Hit them hard and fast, before they have a chance to think."


  Ryan agreed. "But we need to divide up, so that a search party can try and find the labs where they're brewing up the pox. Mildred's not up to speed. It's taking hold on her, Doc and Jak more and more. She'll need good backup."

  "Then I figure we send Tammy and Dean with her, mebbe a couple of others. They're both hard and fast, they work well together, and Dean seems to know more about old tech than anyone except Mildred."

  Ryan nodded. "Good call." He scanned the area ahead once more. "They must have sec cameras internally—most of these places do, even if they long ago gave out. Got to figure that theirs are still in operation. We want someone to keep watch on the tunnel while we brief the others."

  Gloria agreed, and the two warrior leaders returned to the area where their forces were gathered. J.B. was now fully fit, having recovered from a bout of the shakes brought on by the aftereffects of being so close to the explosion. Tammy, Mildred and Dean were with him. Ryan beckoned to them. Gloria pulled Nita and Dette from the pack of impatient warriors, and put them on watch by the ruined doorway.

  "Looks like they've pulled right back," Ryan told them as they approached. "I figure they'll keep an eye on us, and mebbe put a few obstacles in our path, but it's time for the main party to head on and take these coldheart bastards out of the game."

  "What about the lab?" Mildred asked.

  "I was getting to that," Ryan told her. "We want a smaller offensive for the lab party. Hit hard and fast. Now, you've got to be part of that, Mildred, but—"

  "But I'm not on the ball," Mildred cut in. "Yeah, I know it, and that's what worries me."

  "Don't worry too much about it," Ryan assured her. "I figure—Gloria, too—that we keep your party small, mebbe a half dozen at most. You, Tammy and Dean. Perhaps two, three others."