James Axler (23 page)

There was a pause then, the car falling silent. Ryan swiftly reloaded the SIG-Sauer, the spent cartridges clattering to the floor while J.B. covered him.

A stream of bullets came at Ryan and J.B. from behind the ladder as the surviving sec man fired blindly in their direction. The blasts from the ugly, flared snout of the blaster dug chunks of wood from the wall behind them, and Ryan and J.B. scurried to the right, out of their attacker’s potential arc of fire. Ryan watched him through the rungs of the ladder while J.B. trained his Uzi at the top of the ladder, ready for the overhead gunner.

Suddenly the train lurched around a sharp bend in the track and all three of the men on the ground level staggered, losing their positions. The sec man behind the ladder recovered, aiming his blaster at J.B.’s chest, firing three rapid shots. Two of them missed, whizzing past J.B. as his finger gently squeezed the trigger on his Uzi, unleashing a stream of bullets at the man, spraying him over the upper legs, chest and face as he fell backward with their impact. J.B. staggered as the sec man’s third bullet took him low in the torso, and his breath blurted out of him with the bullet’s impact.

Ryan looked at the Armorer, seeing the flash of pain that crossed his face, and his single eye moved down to J.B.’s gut where the bullet had hit. A dark stain was forming on his shirt. The Armorer looked down as he regained his composure, pulled back one side of his jacket, reached into an interior pocket and pulled out the can of pineapple chunks. There was a dent in the can and syrupy liquid was trickling from the far side creating the stain. The can had deflected the bullet, just enough for it to miss the Armorer, glancing off into one of the walls somewhere. J.B. looked at it, a grim smile crossing his lips, and tossed the leaking tin to one side of the boxcar with a clatter.

An eerie silence had descended on the car once J.B. stopped firing and the fallen sec man stopped moving.

The companions waited, their breathing hard as the adrenaline pumped through them, waiting for the upside gunner to reappear. There was a sudden report from his blaster, and they watched as a bullet embedded in the floor beneath the ladder. Then a second and third followed, hitting different points in the floor, but none of them hit near Ryan or J.B.

The two companions walked carefully forward, edging around the area beneath the circular hole in the roof, watching more bullets pump into the floor from above. It was clear that the sec man wasn’t aiming, just hoping a stray shot might catch the intruders.

Across the other side of the ladder, J.B. gestured to Ryan, miming the pumping of a shotgun barrel and making a querulous face. J.B. was right—the man could have a whole stack of weapons up there besides the .38 blaster. It wouldn’t do to just rush up there while he appeared to be reloading.

J.B. took careful aim with the Uzi and blasted off several rounds up the ladder and into the cavity above.

They heard the man curse violently as the bullets whizzed around him in the enclosed space, and he reeled off four more shots in reply, the bullets embedding themselves in the scratched wooden boards at the foot of the ladder.

Ryan edged closer to the ladder, silently instructing J.B. to fire again. The Armorer did so, and they heard the man scream in pain. One of the bullets had hit him, maybe off a ricochet. A stream of profanity accompanied bullets from the .38 as the man blasted shots down the ladder, several of them close to where Ryan stood.

Ryan reached up, the SIG-Sauer handblaster steady in his grip, and pushed the nose of the blaster against the car’s wooden roof. He pulled the trigger, and reeled off three shots through the rotting wood and into the space above. With the second shot they heard the man scream once more, then heard him slump to the roof above with a heavy thud accompanied by the sound of a blaster shot but no sign of the bullet. Ryan continued to hold the SIG-Sauer to the ceiling, shifting it slightly to where he thought the thud had come from and firing off three more shots. He pulled the blaster away as three thin streams of red began to drip through the bullet holes in the ceiling.

Without looking back, Ryan and J.B. reloaded their weapons and continued onward.

MILDRED HAD HELD Krysty’s head, pulling her hair back while the woman spluttered blood into the washbowl that Doc had passed her. After a while, Krysty had turned to spluttering pink drools of saliva, dry heaving but producing nothing else from her stomach. Her whole body shook, and she had cried pitifully with the explosive force of her vomiting, but it had finally passed and she now lay back on the bunk, her eyes closed as Mildred and Doc watched over her. The vomiting spell had lasted almost fifteen minutes, pretty much the whole time that the train remained stationary at the tower in the wastelands.

Doc had kept one eye on the comings and goings outside the window, but remained disinclined to investigate further, genuinely fearing for Krysty’s life now. Again he had had to remind himself of how wrong this all was, that Krysty’s destiny was not to die by the hand of some rogue, unseen infection, whatever the cause.

“Curse those blasted towers,” he suddenly exhorted, pumping a fist into his open palm with a loud slap.

“Doc,” Mildred said, trying to calm him, “There’s nothing we can do but keep her safe.” She looked at the old man, seeing the anger that had finally broken through his calm exterior, and held her gaze on him as he wrestled with the situation in his mind.

“I hate to see her hurting like this,” Doc said, his voice still tense.

“It hurts us all, Doc,” Mildred insisted, keeping her voice level.

Doc sat quietly for a few seconds, looking at the shapely redheaded woman on the bed, at the dried blood smeared across her chin and throat. “Ryan should be here now,” Doc said firmly but quietly.

Mildred looked at the floor, shaking her head slowly.

“This whole situation has been impossible since the second we got here,” she said quietly, almost as though she spoke only to herself. “We’re stretched thin, vulnerable and Krysty’s…” She stopped herself, looking at the still body of the woman lying on the bed, hands folded across her chest as though lying in state.

“Krysty’s what?” Doc encouraged, not from spite but from a need to hear the truth.

“Krysty’s in a lot of trouble,” was all Mildred would tell him with any certainty. She didn’t want to say the other thing, the word that was looming at the forefront of both their minds.

RYAN AND J.B. FOUND themselves in an unlit, cold car that stank of human waste. To their right was a cage and inside were six children along with the corpse of a seventh. The children huddled together under a sack that had been split to make a blanket, remaining as far from the rotting corpse as they were able in the tight confines of the cage. Ryan and J.B. were both relieved and disappointed to find that Jak was not among them.

The cage was an add-on, the unit they were in looked like some kind of cattle truck or maybe a horse box with a gaping hole along the wall of the corridor, opposite the cage itself. The cage had been constructed using some kind of sturdy mesh, and Ryan pushed his hand against the grille wall with some force before concluding it was solidly built. The mesh bent under pressure, but seemed to have enough give in it to simply bounce back when he let go.

J.B. stood with his Uzi ready, watching through the open slit of the car as the tortured landscape hurtled past. The children ignored both men, clearly used to armed adults intruding on their tiny world, assuming them to be part of the force of their captors.

“We should free them,” Ryan said to J.B., keeping his voice low.

J.B. agreed, nodding a definite yes as he thought through the angles of such an operation. “Need to have somewhere to put them, a way off the train, way to keep the crew off our backs and theirs.” He pointed to the horizontal slit that ran the length of the car, gesturing to the dead landscape outside the train. “It’s rad hot out there, no place to take children.”

Automatically, Ryan checked his lapel pin rad counter, saw the tiny display had turned orange: a hot zone, but not immediately lethal. Run around in it for three or four days on the trot and you’d start to see sores on your body that wouldn’t heal, though, and the immune system of malnourished kids like this, well, it would be game over.

“Hey,” Ryan said, offering the children a friendly smile as he approached the door to the cage. “I need you to help me.” None of the children reacted. They just watched Ryan blankly, their eyes wide in fear. “I’m looking for a friend of mine, a man with white skin, anyone seen him?”

The children continued to look at Ryan, remaining absolutely still and silent.

J.B. reached across, skimming Ryan’s arm with his knuckles. “They’re scared, Ryan. They’re terrified.”

“I know,” Ryan said quietly, his jaw set as he looked at the children in the cage. He crouched on his haunches, looking at the group of children for a moment. “We’re friends,” Ryan told them. “We’ll get you out. We’ll come back and we’ll get you out. I promise.” Then he and J.B. departed, stepping through the door into the next car.

RYAN AND J.B. STEPPED through the remains of a cage, parts of the grille work still dangling from the holed roof. There was blood and body parts all over the car, and a gaping hole in the exterior walls on either side bore witness to where the rocket had passed straight through. The body parts were small, the little legs and arms of children. One of the bodies was almost intact, just missing a hand, but it was charred, black where the flesh had burned in the ensuing fire after the rocket had hit.

Maybe some had escaped during the confusion.

Ryan clung to that thought as he walked across the blood-smeared wooden boards of the car, his SIG-Sauer still in his hand. J.B. disturbed his thoughts then, stooping and prodding at some body parts with the muzzle of his Uzi. “Find something?” Ryan asked.

“No one I recognize,” J.B. stated, his face set, fury burning behind his eyes.

Ryan looked at the body parts, thinking about how these children had died, their last days spent in terror, captives to the psychopaths running this hellish train until one of them was taken off, stripped naked and used in whatever foul experiments they had stumbled on in the bloated cars farther down the train.

J.B. rose from his sifting on the floor, his expression equal parts weariness, anger and determination. “Jak’s a survivor,” the Armorer reminded his friend. “He’ll be right as rain.”

They walked through the ashes that covered the floor and opened the door into the next car.

“MEN COMING,” Humblebee and Marc called across the cage to Jak from their vigil watching the rear door of the car. Jak palmed the knife in his hand and rolled back from the cage door. Marc was holding one of the makeshift daggers that Jak had carved from the wall, and he copied the albino’s move as best he could, palming the weapon in a half second.

The rear door opened and two men walked in, blasters in their hands. The one in the lead had to crab-walk through the narrow corridor alongside the cage, just as Jak had imagined.

“Ryan,” he said, beaming when he saw his old friend.

“And J.B.” He stood and walked with them as they both rounded the cage to stand in the larger gap in front of the bolted door.

“Dark night, it’s good to see you!” J.B. exclaimed, looking through the mesh at his imprisoned friend.

“How they been treating you?” Ryan asked, looking past Jak to the children that filled the cage.

Jak pulled open the top few buttons of his dark shirt, showing Ryan the purple bruise that had been generated when he had been hit with the tranq dart. “Dart gun,” he explained. “See again, chill shooter.”

Ryan laughed. It was a relief to see his friend in such high spirits after all that had happened in the last, terribly long half day.

“Krysty?” Jak asked, not sure how he should broach the subject. “Better yet?”

Ryan looked wistful, his mouth a thin line. “Hard to say, Jak. She’s been out of it half the time. Mildred was none the wiser when we left them. They’re both on the train with us, along with Doc, keeping a low profile in a secure cabin.”

J.B. spoke up then, his tone faintly amused. “Surprised to see you in here. Thought you’d have come up with six escape routes by the time we caught up with you.”

Jak held him in a steady gaze. “Got seven, deciding when for.”

“That’s my boy.” Ryan laughed.

Jak felt a presence at his side and turned to see that Maddie was standing there, holding Humblebee’s little hand in her own, with Marc and Allison just behind.

They were all looking at Ryan and J.B.

“Introduce friends,” Jak told Maddie and the others,

“Ryan and J.B. Hundred percent loyal.” He gestured to the children, went through them, telling Ryan and J.B. their names.

It was uncomfortable, making small talk with children when they all knew they were on a tight schedule, but Ryan spoke to the children, doing his best to put them at their ease while J.B. kept close watch on the closed doors at either end of the car.

Francis-Frankie pointed to Ryan’s face. “What happened to your eye?” he asked, not a trace of malice in his voice.

Ryan put a hand to the patch, running his fingers around the edge where it met his scarred flesh. “I had a fight with my brother, a long time ago, and it ended up that he took my eye out.”

Several of the children gasped, imagining how it had to have happened. Marc stepped forward, speaking quickly. “Didja chill ’im?”

Ryan nodded. “Had to in the end.”

Just then, the door at the front of the car opened and the curly haired sec man burst in. “I’m ready for your little dance, sweetheart,” he said with a laugh as he stepped into the car, blaster in hand. He stopped in mid-stride, looking at the two armed strangers in shock.

Adam had called together his troops when the train had halted at the tower in the poisonous wastelands, telling them of his discovery in the weapons car and advising them to pass the information along. He wouldn’t entertain the idea that this might have been a domestic dispute of some kind, either between Phil Billion and his lady Jen or perhaps with another crewman. He ran a tight team here, ragtag mercs but ones good at obeying orders. A lot of the crew had been with the project right from the start, and many of them had a vested interest in seeing Baron Burgess’s plans come to fruition after such a long investment of their time. Internal squabbles, while not unheard of, had never escalated into chilling like this.